Tutorial - Fabric Color Wheel

What better way to start a cold new year than with a blast of color?

I've wanted to make a twelve-spoke fabric color wheel for awhile, and I finally accomplished my goal last month.  I've seen other fabric color wheels, but none exactly like I wanted.  For a twelve-spoke, each slice of the wheel needed to be 30 degrees and I thought too much about how to do that.  Looking at 60 degree angles on my cutting ruler and 30 degree marks on a protractor only made it worse.  Simple minds need simple solutions.   Paper piecing seemed the logical choice.

WHAT I DID WHEN I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO PAPER PIECE:
Tape a color wheel on top of a large sheet of paper and use the black lines on the color wheel as a guide to extend the lines onto the paper.  The brown paper is 2 feet x 2 feet.  It's 12 inches from the center of the color wheel to the outer edge of each slice of the pie.

Once you remove the color wheel , you'll see all that blank space underneath.  Get out your 24-inch cutting ruler and draw connecting lines across the empty circle.  Notice you now have twelve itty-bitty points coming together.  Do you want all those seams converging?  No, you do not!  Well maybe you do, but I didn't.  Draw a 2-inch diameter inner circle by marking a dot on each line, 1 inch from the center, then connecting the dots.

Lastly, connect the outer lines.

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO:
You're only going to use one of these slices as a pattern, so you don't have to draw all twelve if you don't want to.

The fun part is picking out the fabric.  I chose three values for each color, matching them to the color wheel.  These are some of my cool colors...

 ... and these are some of my warm colors.

Sew the three fabrics into a column.  My dimensions were:

• outer section of pie = 8 x 5 inches
• middle section of pie = 6 x 3 1/2 inches
• inner section of pie = 5 x 4 inches  
  

HERE'S THE PART WHERE I GAVE UP ON PAPER PIECING.

YOU CAN SKIP THIS STEP OR READ ABOUT MY FAILURE.

I started my paper piecing full of confidence - even cockiness, you might say.  I love paper piecing and have done it many times.  This photo shows the red fabric pinned to the back, before any trimming or sewing was done.

The next steps were

• fold on the line (see red arrow)
• trim the red fabric so there was a 1/4-inch seam allowance
• line up the raw edges of the red fabric with the red-orange, right sides together
• flip the paper back down
• sew on the line
• turn to the fabric side, flip open the fabric and press along the seam 
• ditto for the next column

What happened was a disaster.  Each column had three values (see picture below).  Because of the discordant nature of trying to sew a 180 degree line of fabric onto a 30 degree template, the center bands were skewing out of control.   THERE WAS NO ALIGNMENT!  If there was just one fabric per slice of the color wheel, it wouldn't have been a problem.  I was so aggravated that I didn't take a picture of the mess.

My other problem was sewing red to red-orange on the lower edge of the pie (where I had the red arrow in an earlier photo).  The finished side of the quilt is on the back side of the paper, so when I flipped the paper over, red-orange was to the left of red, and on a color wheel it's supposed to be on the right.

HERE'S A MUCH BETTER WAY TO DO IT.

Here's the new plan.  Cut out one of the slices of the color wheel paper and use it for a pattern.  Here you can see the three bands of fabric for blue-green.  Be sure you pin the pattern to the fabric before cutting so you don't have any slippage.

I'm using a Fiskars rotating cutting mat that I bought for my quilt retreat.  I just love this mat.  It was only 2/3 the price of the Olfa mat and it has a more solid base.  

 

Trim the fabric, leaving a 1/4-inch seam allowance on the sides.  I was very careful with all of my cuts, but I still ran into a problem!  I was getting pretty tired of problems.

So can you see my problem?  I've got me a couple of gaps.  Rats!  Luckily, I noticed it when I laid the slices out on my design wall, before I sewed all the seams together.  No seams in this photo.

Not to worry - nothing a little creative trimming won't fix!  Sew three slices into a quarter, then trim each quarter to 90 degrees.   This step made me even more glad I had a rotating cutting mat.  Once you get your twelve-inch square ruler carefully placed for trimming, you just have to cut and spin.   

Here it is before trimming.  You can just barely see the little bit that needs to be cut away in the lower right corner.  You'd hardly think it was worth the trouble except you and I know better!

Trimming means that slices one and three of each quarter pie won't be exactly 30 degrees, but it won't even be noticeable in the finished product. 

Sew the quarters together, then turn under 1/4 inch on the outer edge.  In this photo, the color wheel is pinned to the white background fabric I'm going to applique it on.  My color wheel is 24 inches across and the white fabric is a 36-inch square.  I chose quilting thread to coordinate with each slice of the pie.

Here's a closeup of the quilting I did on the pie slices.  Instead of appliqueing around the entire outer edge first thing as a placeholder, I stitched one section at a time.  I used the same quilting design in each color.  When I got done, I appliqued a white circle over the center hole.

 

I sewed concentric circles on the white background, 1/2 inch apart.  When I got done, I had the most wavy quilt I ever made.  All that circular stitching was like pulling on the bias and I didn't think I'd ever get it flat.  Through a combination of blocking and a basting thread which I eased on all four sides, it came out acceptable.

This was a really hard quilt to make, but it's one of my favorites and I'm really glad I made it.