Primary Pinwheels A'Plenty

I'm so excited to share some photos of my current work-in-progress. This is my first quilt that I am doing without following a pattern (eek!). If I am feeling ambitious, I may just write up my own pattern when I'm done!

I had these two beautiful charm packs by Moda (Wee Folks & A Breath of Avignon) that happened to coordinate with some great primary colors. I've been meaning to start a baby quilt for my cousin's baby, who we just found out will be a girl!

So--here are some in-progress highlights from my first pinwheel adventure.

I started with 5" charms to make 4 half square triangles (HSTs). I tried out a new method, which I highly recommend. You can check it out here!

Here is my pieced layout of the center quilt top, along with my sous-quilter, Bentley. I ended up switching a few pinwheels around before sewing the whole top together.

Here's part of the finished quilt top, including borders. I had a lot of help from the Robert Kaufman Quilt Calculator app for iPhone and iPad with determining my yardage, etc for my backing, border, and binding. A must have, if I do say so!

I'm just getting into free motion quilting, and this is one of my first quilts completely that will be completely quilted freely. Thoughts?

I am so excited about the backing I found for this quilt. I was originally going to pull a moda fabric from the front, but to be honest, Joann;s was having a huge sale and I was not patient enough to drive to Fabric Shack or order online. My cousin Lindsey and I have a special connection with cherries...they are our 'thing'. Quick story: in 2005-ish, we took a family trip to Italy and Lindsey came along. I could tell you lots of stories about our culinary adventures challenges, since Linny is a very picky eater and will not eat cheese, fish, eggs. Well, on a hungry day in Calabria (a very southern beach town where my family is from), she and I stumbled across a man selling cherries from the back of a cart. Needless to say, we bought a ridiculously large amount of cherries (thanks to the mysteries of the metric system) and stuffed ourselves. We went back every day for the rest of the vacation for our cherry gorge. It was great. Anyway, cherries have been our thing ever since! I think she is going to love this cherry pinwheel quilt, since it will be now be something we can share with the new little one. 

Stay tuned for more Primary Pinwheel updates; I'm hoping to have this one quilted by the end of the weekend!