I love pinwheel block. It is quite straightforward and easy to do once you know how. Pinwheels can be made large or small and placed in rows or borders or at random. You could even make a pillow with a large pinwheel block. They are made up of 4 half square triangles- here is my post on how to make half square triangles

For these pinwheels, I used 10 inch squares to make 8 half square triangles at a time, giving me 4 inch half square triangles to work with. To make a pinwheel you need 4 half square triangle blocks arranged as shown. It’s helpful to have 2 contrasting colors.

Here’s an example of some pinwheels I made without contrasting colors so you can see what a disaster that was!

So basically, now all you do is sew the 4 squares together. The tricky thing though is that the there are 8 seams meeting in the middle which can cause a lot of bulk. So choose which side to iron the fabric towards. Stitch 2 squares together and iron the seams flat.

Then stitch those pieces together to form the pinwheel, but to reduce bulk, iron each side opposite one another, by color – you can see that everything has been ironed so that the seams are facing the darker fabric.

Remove the tiny seam left in the seam allowance, and with your finger open all the seams open forming a tiny star in the center. Iron it flat,

Turn it over and iron that side flat.

All finished- now you’re ready to use your block to make a quilt, pillow, table topper or whatever!