Civil War Block and Disappearing Pinwheel

Hi everybody.  I didn't have to work today so I had hopes for getting a lot done.  Well that didn't turn out to be the case but I still managed to get some things done.  I washed the fabric for my text pattern so I can start on that this week.  I'm glad that I didn't start on it today considering my mistakes I made on other things.

I did manage to get my Civil War Block for the BOM done.  It was a churn dash and I had never done one of those before.  It was relatively easy to put together so I might have to make that block more often.  I was so proud with how easy it went together and then I took this picture.

Ummm.  Woo oh George.  Yeah, I put some of it together wrong.  There is a reason I have more than one seam ripper and they are strategically spaced around the apartment.  I picked up the latest one and had that row disassembled in no time.  I thought I might have to take that whole row apartment but didn't have to.  NOW the block looks so much better.

Did you notice that my points turned out pretty good?  Woo hoo!  I wanted to see how it looked with the other blocks so I went to were I kept them.  Hmmm. The Gremlins were at it again and hid them.  I finally found them and laid them out.

As I laid them out, I counted out how many blocks there were.  1..2..3..4..5..6..7......there was suppose to be 8, not seven.  I can hear the Gremlins laughing at this.  I will look further for it but that will be another day.

Then I decided to work on the disappearing pinwheel block as seen on the Missouri Quilt Company YouTube vid.

I started with two 10" squares.  One plain and one patterned.  Sew a quarter inch seam all the way around it and then cut it diagonal corner to diagonal corner and repeat.  When done you will have this.

This is how they do their Half Square Triangles.  open up the triangles and press towards the dark side.  I used two fabrics which are really too thin for most projects so I've decided to use some of my thinner fabrics for test blocks.  Why use up my good stuff when I have other fabric around.  This way it is being used up.  This is one block that I was curious as to how it would go together.  Not sure if I will make another one or a wall hanging or what with them so it was a good time to try out fabric.  One day I might use all of the various "one blocks" that I am doing and put them all together.  

Now that I had my HST all done, you make a pinwheel block.  That might sound easy but I had to watch the watch the video again to make sure I had the wheels going in the right direction.  LOL.  

I trimmed my block to 12.5" so it would match the directions in the video.  :)   You are suppose to be measure your pinwheel block and then divide that number by 3.  You want to have equal parts.  Since I trimmed my block to 12.5" I could use their number.  That turned out to be 2 1/8th.  So I measured 2 1/8th from the CENTER seam and cut.  You need to cut all four sides so a rotating mat would be helpful.  

You do that on all four sides but make sure you do it from the CENTER.  That will give you nine pieces which will make up your Churn Dash block.  I would have one for you to see but I miscalculated  on one side and cut on 1 1/8th instead of  2 1/8th.  So I had to redo it.  Back to the drawing board.  I decided this time that I would use my water soluable blue pen and drew my line this time before I cut it.

It's a good thing that I did because you can see from the squiggly line that I had to redraw one of the lines.  Since it was water soluable marking pen, a quick spritz of water and it disappeared.  Now I just have to wait for the cloth to dry before I sew it together.

I pinned down the wet fabric and turned it around into the final configuration for the Churn Dash  with a pinwheel in the middle.

You might see small pins in the individual pieces. That's to hold it in place while my fan is blowing on it.  LOL.

Well that is what I did today.  What did you do?