Pinwheel Pillow

This classic crochet project is very pomo. It's also totally The Loop. Our store in Downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia sees my business partners and I, in turn, perched on quite a hard little bar chair for most of the day. It seemed silly not to try and create our own pillow, and I have always wanted to stitch one of these nostalgic pinwheels. I was surprised that I could not find a pattern, even amongst my vintage books and pamphlets, so I reverse engineered a pattern from a 1970s pinwheel pillow I had in the house. I didn't much care for what I ended up with. This new pattern is modernized with simplified shaping. It is also streamlined by omitting one feature; most of these cushions, in decades passed, were worked with a hard circular centre covering the join, much like the centre of a flower. With this new pattern it is no longer necessary to cover the centre join. I think it looks much more modern this way. It's comfier too. I have included instructions for a centre though, in case you're feeling nostalgic.
There are also optional finishing instructions for 'couching' the pillow.

This pattern was designed for The Loop and directions can be found on their Free Pattern Page, as a pdf file. Post your projects on Ravelry and see other crocheters' results.

This is the Colour Sequence I finally set upon for the store's pillow. I used my good friend Cascade 220 wool. The colours are inspired by The Loop. If you would like to use your own sequence, I suggest trying The Random Stripe Generator. Of course, you could just dive in, changing colours when you feel inspired to do so. Don't forget that you can change the number of colours used to amazing effect, and that this project is a great stash buster; just change yarns when you run out of each colour.

Biscuits & Jam's Random Stripe Generator can be found here. I use it all the time. I find it difficult to come up with colourways and sequences that look random. Mine always look laboured. What I really like about the online stripe generator is that it not only shuffles colours, it allows you to program in a range of rows over which the colours are spread. I asked for a sequence for 6 colours with rows ranging from 1 to 4 rows. The pillow could be worked with as little as 2 colours to amazing effects. Of course a hard candy inspired pinwheel would be striking as well.
Questions or Comments? PM me on Ravelry, or post a comment here (you don't need a login to do so). If you are in the Halifax area and want to try this, or any of The Loop or Pomoboho patterns drop by the store. Sundays are always good.