Pinwheels with My Scraps

Pinwheels! Why all the pinwheels? Pinwheels make me smile. They are cheery and I get a surge of satisfaction every time those eight triangles, four HSTs, all meet at a central point. These particular pinwheels are made from corner trimmings leftover from a quilt I made in 2012 when my first grandchild was born. Making these pinwheels brought back fond memories of her arrival and of making that quilt, Little Witch Girl.  This sewing diversion is also my first overdue step in controlling my scraps. Hopefully this nostalgic approach will lead to success in scrap reduction and scrap recycling.

One of my goals for 2026 is scrap management. I made no progress in scrap management in 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025. In 2022 I was going to research the best approach. Here are quotes from each of my years of good intentions with poor results.

2022:
"I will develop a method to manage my scraps, a promise I have made to myself several years running. I will go beyond merely reading all the different suggestions for organizing in the media – by color, by shape, by trimming to consistent sizes. Then I will choose a method that, for me, is easy and not onerous to implement. Even if I gather 90% of all my scraps in one place in a designated bin (or bins) I will consider this a victory to start and worry about how to sort, group and utilize them later."

2023, 2024, 2025:

"consolidate/control scraps", "develop a system to consolidate and control"

My ineffective approach, which has been flopping for many years, is to put all the unused fabric leftover from a quilt in a ziplock bag. I have bins full of these bags, deluding myself into thinking I was organized.  Advice I'd read suggested that this practice was wise because the fabrics in each bag already coordinated amongst themselves, but... so what? I now have many bins of zip-locked bags taking up space. I needed a sustainable approach to deal with these scraps —  other than trashing them. For me to persevere, the method needed to be fun and inviting. Hence my pinwheel attempt.

One zip locked bag at a time, I am making the paired triangle trimmings up into pinwheels. So far I have gone through three bags: one for the previously shown baby quilt made in 2012, another for a monkey quilt made in May of 2014, and a third for a nautical quilt made in August 2014. By coincidence purely, the scraps from these three quilts lend themselves primarily to triangles and pinwheels. 

These green and white pinwheels are from a shamrock wall hanging I completed this year. It is unusual for me to deal with the scraps so soon. Ideally I should do it after each completed quilt, but usually I am bored with the fabrics by then. I'm finding it much better to procrastinate and sift through the old stuff, stirring up fond memories. I will not run out of "old stuff" to sift through for quite a while.

Of course there are other shapes other than triangles in the bags. The long narrow pieces I am gathering as strips to possible go into quilt blocks striped on the diagonal. The squares I am stacking and they may go into 4-patch or 9-patch or even 16-patch depending how many I accumulate. Odd shaped pieces are accumulated in a designated bag for dog bed stuffing. At this point I am doing no cutting to pre-determined sizes.

On low sewing mojo days, or on doldrum days between projects, I can boost my mood and jog some pleasant memories by zipping open a bag. Also, in this gradual approach, I am not trashing my sewing room all at once dragging out everything to process. With each bag I handle, I get to review and reminisce about the quilt that generated those scraps. It is far too soon to tell, but a good outcome would be having a bin for pinwheels, one for squares, one for strips, and one for orphan blocks. It is a start. Will I keep it up? Fingers crossed.

Saxophone Mesh Bag

My teenage granddaughter started playing the saxophone so I looked for saxophone fabric online, Once I found some, I ordered one yard, the minimum. It is not 100% cotton — I am so used to quilting fabric — but rather it is a cotton polyester blend, 54" wide, with a heavier weight and velvet feel. I decided to make her a mesh project bag with a pattern from byAnnie. The pattern Piecekeeper only calls for a fat quarter of the feature fabric, so I will need to be inspired as to what to do with the rest of the 54" wide yardage. I combined the saxophone fabric with a fat quarter in yellow for the lining, and a fat quarter in gray for the binding and handle. I also bought an embroidered saxophone patch just for fun. Here is my assembly journey in stages. All went smoothly; directions were excellent.

Back and Lining
The first step is to sandwich the feature fabric, a foam center, and the lining fabric and quilt the sandwich together. I decided to angle and space diagonal stitching lines to minimize crossing the saxophones. Serendipitously, the lines came out fairly evenly distributed. Initially, I marked the quilting lines with a white chalk pencil on the black, but they were very hard to see. I increased visibility by sticking tape ¼" away parallel to the lines and stitched beside it with my ¼" foot. I used black thread on the top and pale yellow thread on the underside. Here are the outside and lining views of the bag back. The edges have all been "sealed" by a stitching a line ⅛" from all four edges. The puffy look is appealing and not overdone.

The circles on the yellow fabric seem to echo the gray circles on the black. It reminds me of champagne music like used to be on The Lawrence Welk show and the song I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles. Now I really am dating myself! I googled if Lawrence Welk had saxophones in his band and learned... 

Yes, Lawrence Welk absolutely featured a strong saxophone section in his band, which was a core component of his "Champagne Music" sound. The reed section, often featuring five men, played saxophones and frequently doubled on clarinets, flutes, and piccolos.

Front, Zipper, and Mesh

Making a tweak to the pattern for the bag front, I widened the front band from 3" to 4" so more of the fussy cut saxophone fabric would show. Subsequently, I subtracted 1" from the mesh height to offset that extra 1" of the band. The yellow fabric lining for the band has iron on interfacing. I picked a yellow zipper to go with the yellow mesh.

Binding and Handle
The binding is cut on the bias. I usually cut my binding across width of fabric, but bias is necessary for navigating around the curved corners. The directions say not to press the binding in half prior to application. That tip is so true. The binding goes on more smoothly and the outer visible layer can be a tad wider than the inner concealed layer. I really should try this technique instead of my cross cut bindings. Hmmm, I wonder if bias binding would be problematic with mitered corners.

Here is the handle before attaching. The handle is also interfaced. I widened the fabric strip for the handle from 4" to 5" so that when folded in fourths, the 1¼" width would accommodate the embroidered saxophone patch. I made sure to clip the handle out of the way when adding the bias binding.

Completed Bag
Applying the gray bias binding was the last step. I took my time and used a stiletto to help when rounding the corners. It was slow but relatively easy going. The completed bag came out snazzy as well as jazzy. Here are views from the front and the back.

Pattern
At the byAnnie.com site the Piecekeeper pattern is only available in packs of 25. The pattern is one glossy sheet printed front and back. I suspect quilt shops buy them in bulk and offer one with fabric as a promotional item. That is how I got my first copy, as part of a bundle of three coordinating fat quarters to make the project bag. But individual copies can be found for sale on Etsy. That is where I had to go when I could not locate my original copy, though I had made many projects bags from it. I made twelve of these bags in 2021: seven in my post for 4/9/21, four in my post for 6/6/21, and one in my post for 6/15/21. Just this year I made a Rainbow Brite themed one for my daughter (saxophone player's mother) seen in my post for 2/19/26. They really are fun and make good gifts. Maybe I will make one for myself; I have not yet.