Patriotic fabric pinwheels in a paint stick picket fence…

I love pinwheels, and I love red, white, and blue.  I don’t have any wreaths for my door for my summer months, so I had to come up with something.  I decided on pinwheels, but didn’t want one more wreath.  I decided to make a picket fence out of wooden paint sticks from Home Depot.

I glued the paint sticks together until they were wide enough that I could put two additional paint sticks across to make it look like a fence.  I painted them with a gray, watered down acrylic paint and then hot glued them together.

Then I drilled one hole in each of the top corners and used an old, wire hanger to hang it from.  It makes it look like a basket:)

I used red and white baker’s twine and hot glued it in a swag across the front and then added cardstock with the letters HAPPY and secured them with hot glue.

Here’s some pictures on how I made the pinwheels.  I cut out ten,
 5 inch squares of patriotic fabric and put a piece of Warm and Natural batting in between two pieces to make a little “sandwich.”

Next I sewed from one corner to the opposite, diagonal corner—just off the line of center.  I didn’t pin or mark anything and they turned out great—just wing it!! Then flip it around and sew 1/4 inch down the other side.

You need to do this on the opposite corners as well so you end up with a double straight stitch “X.”  Then you will make 4 cuts to the center, but not through it.

So it looks like this…

I did use contrasting thread (red in my bobbin) to add some fun!!  After you have made your 4 cuts, you can cut the edges of the square with pinking shears.

I folded the corners to make a pinwheel and then sewed a black button in the center.

I hot glued two of the pinwheels directly to the picket fence, and then I spray painted three pencils blue and used them for the other three pinwheels.  The final step was to hot glue some burlap ribbon across the top edge.

Chevron and pinwheels—can’t go wrong there!!  And the picket fence had to be my favorite part—who knew paint sticks could turn into something so fabulous?!?

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