Carpenter's Wheel Quilt Top

I have always loved the carpenters wheel quilt setting since I began quilting way back in 1984. It is a timeless setting and goes well with any era of fabrics from antique, vintage, to everything else. Making a big carpenter wheel has been on my quilters bucket list for, well since I first laid eyes on one.  I found a setting on Pinterest that had rainbow colors against a cream background. I made myself a color chart on graph paper. I think I like the blue at the top left...........what do you think?

I go to a retreat in Phoenix every February for quite some years now and was trying to decide what to bring to work on this last retreat. I came across a large piece of black/grey grunge fabric in my stash and thought it would be enough for a spectacular background. Next I spied a bin of hand dyed fabrics and wondered if I could pick a selection from the bin to make a rainbow or close to a rainbow. Well a couple of hours later I had a pile of 10'' squares. This was going to be a perfect project for the retreat, big, a lot of impact and EASY!

Well turns out that this was not so easy as I thought as I just started sewing half square triangles and quickly realized that each combination was pretty unique and very close attention had to be paid to my chart. By this time I had put the pedal to the medal of the sewing machine so I got to spend quite some time ripping many blocks apart and starting again. It was very rewarding to watch the large quilt quickly being assembled on the design wall...............yes this was a wonderful choice.

Once I got all the blocks made I took them off the design wall and packed them up to finish this project at home. I had made the blocks a little oversized so I could trim to the perfect size (my favorite trick to accurate piecing).

I had just the right size ruler to square them up too.

The ruler by creative grids made the job really easy!

Here are the little bits and strips I trimmed off, and voila a stack of blocks ready to go. I finished sewing up the top last month right after the shelter in place started. I am very excited to quilt this beautiful top but alas my longarm machine is in Colorado and I am sheltering in place in New Mexico so I am keeping busy with sewing clothes and a few quilting projects as well.