quiltsfor

I've made a quilt that has large pinwheels made from precut strips. (Cozy Quilt Designs - Tradewinds) Since I do quilt as you go (worked the pattern so I could do a quilt as you go with it) and quilt each block or section before joining, I am going to use a spiral quilt design in different size spirals to represent the wind and movement of the pinwheels. I need to keep the quilting at least a close 1 inch from the edges of my block so that I can join them without sashing.

I do my quilting on a domestic machine and I pretty much only do quilt as you go, but what I want to do, I haven't done before and wonder if it is recommended or if it really makes no difference since I am not doing a tight fill in of quilting in the blocks. I want to put a square quilted border on each block that will be an inch from the edge on all four sides. I'm thinking of doing this first, before I quilt in the scattered spirals.

Since I am not going to put in a tight fill in of quilting, my question would be - do you think it is fine to do the quilted square first, or would you do the spirals first. My sandwich is put together with spray basting if that helps any.

I'm leaning to doing the quilted square first as I want to place my spirals in configuration with it and not have to tape off where my square would be if I don't do it first. Since I am only doing a light quilting of the spirals, I'm thinking that there won't be a lot of movement within the sandwich to cause puckers or rolls if I do the square first.

I'm torn on how to proceed. My avatar is one of the quilt blocks I'm talking about.