the patchwork dress: magazine pinwheels

I have been making these 'pinwheels' at work - my colleague and I have made nearly 150! There was something about the way they sit in the boxes that I wanted to photograph.

These are made with my own favourite stalwart - magazine paper! Once folded you get quite an abstract pattern, most of the text gets lost or can provide an unusual feature.

Here's a simple/lazy way to make them using a magazine.

Materials required:

Magazine (or wallpaper, wrapping paper, etc)

Scissors or scalpel/ruler

Wire - short florist wire works best, or cut down with snips approx 6"

10 minutes of time.

1. Pull/score out pages that attract you for their colours or patterns. Full colour pages work best, a little text on them doesn't matter - experiment.

2. Fold the paper in half ie, make top of page meet the bottom. Cut/scalpel along this crease.

(photos would be good, wouldn't they - but sorry too lazy to take them... read on!)

3. You now have 2 rectangles of paper. On the shortest edge of each begin to concertina. The fold works best just under 1cm - but as it comes naturally to you! (If you make the first fold by taking the chosen picture onto the back, they fix together better - all will become clear when you do this!)

4. Now with the paper all bunched up in its folded concertina, fold in half again across its length to make a little fan. Fix the gap by stapling or sellotaping on the back, so you now get a complete half circle fan. Repeat with the other rectangle.

5. There should be a little gap still toward the centre of either fan. Fold a piece of wire (florists) in half and poke the ends through the 2 gaps, and twist together at back of your now complete pinwheel!

6. Fasten the gaps if necessary.

7. Of course you can use any paper, we also did some from old wallpaper scraps. The beauty of magazine paper is the variety, colour and sheen - not one pinwheel will be the same, and the size is pretty much readymade by the paper size of the magazine. We were inspired by this blog, but you could twist the wires onto a bunting type string, or twist into flower arrangements... or put on a hat, wear in your hair, ...decorate your cat!