SDS4910 Pinwheel Vol4 Stamp8

Round and round it goes — a quilt block that has been spinning for more than 200 years.

The Pinwheel is one of the most familiar blocks in patchwork. Four pairs of triangles are turned around a centre point so that the darker pieces seem to spin, just like the little paper pinwheels children have held up to the wind for generations. There are no curves and no complicated shapes — only triangles and contrast — yet the block is full of movement.

And it has a remarkable history. The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History holds a "Pinwheel" quilt made in Maryland between 1812 and 1814. According to the family's records, it was made by women of the Adams family while the men were away fighting in the War of 1812. Its pieced pinwheel blocks alternate with white squares filled with elaborate stuffed quilting in ten different patterns, all framed by a quilted feathered vine border.

The quilt was passed down through the family until a great-great-granddaughter of one of its makers donated it to the museum in 1962.

🌬️ Did You Know?

The Pinwheel has spun its way through many names and publications!

Ruth Finley included a Pin Wheel block in her 1929 book Old Patchwork Quilts and the Women Who Made Them, and in the 1930s similar designs were published as The Pinwheel, Pin Wheels and Paper Pinwheels by popular pattern sources including Laura Wheeler, Nancy Page and quilt collector Carrie Hall. Related versions have also been called Windmill.

The direction of the spin is entirely up to the quilter: turn the triangles one way and it spins clockwise, the other way and it spins counter-clockwise.

🧵 A Little Heritage

Few blocks connect us to the past quite like the Pinwheel. The same simple triangles that Adams family women stitched during wartime more than two centuries ago are still being pieced by quilters today — often as one of the very first blocks a new quilter learns.

We've captured this spinning classic as Volume 4, Stamp 8, giving you another little piece of quilt history to add to your Heritage Quilt Society collection.