Pinwheel Pin Cushion Tutorial

How to Sew a quick easy pinwheel pin cushion. 

The amount of material required is small: three fabric squares (5 inches in my case) and a handful of batting.

Two pieces of fabric are needed for the front (pinwheel and background) and one for the back of the pincushion. Both front squares are cut in half horizontally and vertically. With “my measurements” this means 2.5 inches and even with such “small tailoring” I like to use my rotating cutting mat - in no time at all and two become eight!

The “white flowers on red” should form the background, while “turquoise with small dots” becomes the pinwheel. These are now folded diagonally, corner to corner, and the resulting edge is briefly ironed.

Place the turquoise triangles on the red squares. The ironed edge of the triangles lies on the diagonal of the red squares, with the open edges on the inside. The Wonder clips mark which edge is now fixed.

As this seam is only intended to prevent slippage and make further sewing easier, it is placed within the seam allowance and is therefore invisible later on. The white dotted lines illustrate this.

Now the last open edge is folded to the center and you can already see how everything will fit together beautifully. Again, my Wonder clips hold this edge until I have secured it within the seam allowance.

The four squares are sewn together (first two and two, then all four with a final seam). We don't mind the bulky seam allowances on the underside, as they will disappear into the pin cushion later. Just like the children's pinwheels, my wheel also has a colorful bead in the middle. 

All that remains is to sew the front to the back, right sides together, leaving a small opening for turning, cutting back the seam allowance (especially at the corners, not so much at the turning opening), carefully turning the whole thing right side out and stuffing it with wadding.

 A very last magic seam closes the turning opening and TADAA - the new pincushion is finished!
It's really quick in real time and I absolutely love this 3-D effect!
♥

In a chat with Karen afterwards, she gave me the tip to cut the squares of the windmill wheels slightly smaller than those of the background so that the tips of the wings don't quite reach the outer edge of the pincushion and the wheel itself is shown to its best advantage. I'll try that out next time ...