Half Square Triangle Tutorial

A month or so ago I started working on Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt called Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll. You may find more information here: http://www.quiltville.com/. I sewed along the first couple of weeks and then got a little behind. This week I decided to make a great effort toward getting caught up, since we are actually nearing the finish line.



Part 5 was a big stumbling block for me. We are instructed to make 600, yes six hundred! two-inch half -square triangles. Half was to be red, the other half neutral. We are NOT allowed to whine on a mystery quilt, but I was filled with dismay when I thought about the sheer numbers of it all to cut, sew, and press.



There are lots of ideas and instructions for doing half-square triangles. I wanted to do it the easiest way possible. I remembered seeing a tutorial from Missouri Star Quilt Company about a way to cut quilt squares. It is called Summer in the Park and used six jelly roll strips sewn into a tube. Why couldn't I adapt that idea and sew my triangles that way?



I did a yahoo search on half square triangle tutorials and did not find any information about doing it the way I had in my brain. So, I decided to go off the deep end and see what I could come up with. I have not done all 600 yet, but I am pleased with my method so far. It is a daunting task, and then I decided to do my own tutorial about it, which takes even more time!! Oh, well, I am anxious to share it:



I cleared off my kitchen island and laid out a large cutting mat. I placed my neutral fabric on it, right side up. As you can see, it is a little scrappy on one end! I am agreeing with Bonnie's idea to use from my stash!

My red fabric is a dark berry red with pink flowers in it. There has been pink in the other parts of this mystery, so I thought it might go nicely. I lay it on top of the white/cream neutral, right side down.

Since the sewn seam of a half-square triangle is sewn on the bias, I want to cut my fabric on the bias.With the help of a yardstick and the bias cutting line on my mat I made my first cut.

I couldn't quite figure out how wide to make my bias strips to end up with a 2-inch finished square. That is what prompted me to see if this method was on the internet with a chart about how big to make it. Zilch. I decided to cut my strips two inches wide. I figured I would have to square them up anyways. It turned out that two inches was about the right amount oversize when I squared them up.

Cut, cut, cut. As you can see, I have cut the two fabrics together. Now to take them upstairs to my Bernina.

I sewed a quarter inch down the one side of the strips, chain sewing them together.

Then, flip the whole bunch around and run a seam down the other side. These are bias seams, so I try to handle them carefully.

Back to the cutting board. How many HST's will this make? I think it may have been around 120.

Now, to use this nice little ruler to make the little triangles. I put the two-inch mark at the cut edge. That meant that the top point came close to the seam on top. Rotary cut both sides for this first triangle

Flip the ruler over, put the 2 inch mark on the top cut edge, line up the left side with your previous cut. Triangle #2. Only 598 to go!

And so on, down the row. When I did the second batch of these I stacked two cylinders together and cut them two at a time with good success. I wasn't brave enough (or stupid enough) to do three stacks!

I tend to stack things up in piles of ten. I don't know why unless it is to help me count to see where I am at!

Off to the ironing board! Again, I am working in stacks of ten.

Now to square them up. The cutting process actually cuts off most of one of the dog-ears, so I used that nice edge and shaved the excess off the other two sides. Occasionally one of them would need some squaring on all four sides, but most of them were pretty good.

I am using a 12 1/2 inch square up, which is way bigger than I need. When the quilting world finds out my method, of course, I am going to make millions of dollars, and I think I will buy a smaller sized square-up!

Aren't they cute? All squared up.

This is some of the stuff I cut off. As you can see, my squares were about right.

Since I was behind on my sewing, Bonnie's clue about what to do with these hst's has already been revealed. After squaring up about 30 or so, I decided to follow her instructions and sew them together in rows of 5. I chainsew them together.

Here they are on the ironing board, ready to be pressed from the wrong side.

Five rows of five! I WILL be able to finish these triangular strips!

Okay, what is my conclusion? Is this an easier method than others that I have seen? I think so, for me, anyways.

Was it faster? The sewing certainly goes faster because you are sewing long strips together at full speed, instead of the stop and start of sewing smaller pieces. One huge benefit that I liked is that I didn't get the corners all "dog-chewed" as I call it. When I start sewing those triangular pieces at least one in ten seems to get stuck in the throat of my machine, and gets chewed up.

This method is most feasible when you are making lots of half-square triangles of the same fabric.

I think what I like most about it is that it is clever!

And, I do, indeed like clever!

Some Finished Projects

I promised to post some finished projects, and I am getting a little better about loading pictures to blogger. I am learning a little more about quilting, too, by my practicing!! Our mothers always told us that practice makes perfect, and I think of that when I am sewing and see all my imperfections! Anyhow, this is my completed baby boy quilt and I am very fond of it. I showed it at a quilt gathering on Saturday, and some people even wanted to take pictures of it! It is very simple to make and very similar to the gingham girl quilt I showed before. The backing of striped shirt material seems to go with it. All part of my stash reduction project!

Look at the quilt and not the hands and feet! DH and I need some more practice at taking quilt pictures! And, again, the red in this quilt is a cherry, Christmas red.

Here is my zigzaqg quilt, all put together, and you will see more of the red and shirt material. This one was more challenging to put together. It comes from crazymomquilts blog.

Ya gotta chop off some of the zigs or zags, whatever you want to call them, to make a straight edge. Since I don't like bias edges, I cut more of my bountiful red on the straight grain to put a border around it. And, I have kept all those zigs and zags, and will do something funky with them, you can be sure!

I have started to machine quilt this but ran out of red thread. Small wonder since I have been doing so much sewing with red!!

Ah, my musical quilt. It sat for a week or so. I went to the fabric store to find something to put on for borders and binding. I loved this green batik fabric with it and it seemed an excellent match in the flourescent lighting of Joann Fabrics. Now at home and on the camera, it seems less than perfect to me.

I also bought a yard of this brick red with gold stars, which is an excellent match even under our home lighting. If only it were musical notes instead of stars!! I am hesitant to introduce the stars to the musical quilt, but I have decided to use it as binding.

Here is the quilt, with all the blocks put together, hanging over my ironing board. I decided to put a narrow green batik border around it. The coordinating musical print that I bought in the beginning is not going to show up at all in this quilt. The design is busy enough and the green batik border seems to be just right to frame it. This will hang on the wall over our bed.

I have it made into a quilt sandwich with muslin as backing. This quilt is not part of my stash reduction project!

But this one is!! This is a dolly quilt, or called a ticker tape quilt on crazymomquilts blog. The gingham scraps from cutting the five inch squares for my baby girl quilt are a fun idea for this quilt. You just sew the raw edged pieces onto a quilt sandwich! I also did some loop-de-loop quilting between the patches to practice. It was fun to make this little quilt and my grandkids will enjoy it with the dolls when they come.

I bound it with some bias pink gingham that I had a roll of from my rug weaving days. More stash reduction!

This is the holiday hexagon, again from crazymomquilts.com. I made it two strips bigger than the pattern shows. It fits nicely in the center of our kitchen island and shares the same fabric as our crazy quilt valances and our mixer cover. I practiced my loop-de-loop free motion quilting on it.

Now, back to my autumn fabric. I had posted a table runner that I made using the fabric from our fat quarter exchange at Chat & Sew, plus a couple of pieces that I had. I had some fabric left over, so thought I would cut 5 inch squares out of it and make some disappearing nine patch blocks. Here is the table runner I came up with--it's a little long for a table runner, but we have a big dining room table, so it is fine.

I learned a couple of important lessons from this runner. 1. I did more loop-de-loop quilting on it and had lots of fun doing it. However, now that it sits on the table, it looks about as flat as a tortilla! Of course, I am using 4 oz. batting which is not super-lofty anyways. But, too much dense quilting takes away the softness. 2. There are good reasons why we put borders on quilted items, and it is not just because of looks. When I sewed the binding on, I had one area that was a little stretched because I was attaching it to a seam that was weak. Binding is easier and does a better job if you are sewing it onto an unseamed border.

I had some five inch squares left over. I sewed some of them into half-square triangle blocks and made two potholders! These also got rather stiff because of my dense ldl quilting! Usually I give potholders away (they make nice hostess gifts!) or sell them, but these went to my drawer because they are so pretty! Plus, I enjoyed putting the same squares together in a different way.

Oops, I still have two five inch squares left over. How about a pincushion? I seem to use and need lots of them since I go to a quilt group, and also sew upstairs and on the dining room table.

This little guy is rather cute.

One square left. Since the pincushion above it rather small, and I use lots of these quiting pins to sandwich quilts together, I decided to put a border around the remaining square to make it a little bigger. This is a great size---

So, that ends my autumn fabric creations. I still have a nice piece of the fall fabric strings sewn together, but I have put it on the back burner. Other things have taken my creative ideas!!

In looking over my post before publishing, I discovered that my musical quilt it at the bottom of it! I thought I had lost this picture from this posting, but here it is! It shows the narrow green binding sewn around it. Now to get it quilted!

Musical Quilt and other WIP's

I had to get some more of the striped fabric to complete my musical quilt. This time I decided to tak a picture of the fabric before I started cutting it up!

Paper plates work really well to sort out quilt pieces. These triangles have some bias edges and I want to handle them with care!

This is a great tool from Fons and Porter. Jill got this one to make her quilt and I also found mine invaluable for cutting these triangles accurately.

Now, to the sewing machine! I have pinned several of these triangles together. Making this quilt is a lot like sewing plaids. If you don't cut it out right, there is no hope of it matching when you sew it together!

And I am handling these bias seams carefully!

Some of the blocks all nicely pressed, sitting on my big board ironing board.

Then I added more triangles to the squares. These are the triangles I cut from the cross-grain of the fabric. They will make a design of their own when I put the quilt together. Then off the squares go to the WIP category. I need to get some more fabric for borders, backing, and binding.

One of the promises I made myself is that I would reduce the size of my stash. When I was weaving rugs, I bought a lot of fabric. One older woman sold me her stash of fabric, and I got boxes of cotton fabric, enough to fill the floor of a pick-up truck, for $100. She worked at Joann Fabrics, and also made, or intended to make, shirts for her husband. I much preferred polyester double-knit fabrics for my rugs, so I stored this clean, cotton-type material upstairs under a bed.

I have found several very interesting quilting blogs. One of my favorites is crazymomquilts, and I have adapted several of her patterns for my stash reduction projects. The first one is a baby girl quilt, made from the under-the-bed stash of gingham. I believe crazy mom called this fair and square. She staggered her rown, but I like my lined up, so her it is:

I actually did NOT like this quilt after I got the top sewed together. It wasn't until I quilted it that it won me over! The quilting just seemed to bring it to life!

I also used a striped fabric from the same stash for the backing. I have more of this fabric and I think I will put it with the gingham on the front for another quilt.

The next stash-reduction quilt I made is a boy's baby quilt. I used red for the sashing on this. It is actually a true red, even though the pictures show up as having an orangey tinge to it. I used the darker men's plaid for the five inch squares. Here it is as a quilt sandwich, all ready to quilt:

The next posting will show a picture of the finished quilt. I also wanted to try the zig-zag quilt pattern from crazymom's blog. Once again I used the red fabric as the main color. Here is a picture of it on the ironing board after I string-sewed it together. I have completed the sewing of it together. Next I want to put some red borders around it. Without borders, the quilt would have bias edges, which I consider a no-no. It looks like this one is also going to turn out baby-quilt size.

I am very excited to say that I have registered to go to my very first quilt retreat/camp! It is in two weeks time, and I will stay there four days! I can't wait!

Quilting Adventure

My daughter, Jill, found a picture on the internet of a lovely quilt and printed a picture of it out, and cut the picture up. She figured out that the quilt had been made with a striped material, and went to town to buy some and try her hand at it. She told me about it and posted pictures on facebook so I could see her progress on her creation. I was in awe of what she was doing and decided to try my hand at it. Above is a picture of the two yards of striped material I bought along with a coordinating print. Below is a farther away view of the same thing. And--I have discovered that I must have a smudge on my camera lens. This is my old digital camera.

Below is a close-up with a yardstick to show the repeat across the fabric.

After doing some quilting engineering I determined that I want to make my first triangle cut of fabric with a dark red violin in the center of it. I bought a Fons and Porter triangle to help me do the cutting. If I were better at quilt blogging, I would have taken a picture of it to show you.

I also put a brand-new blade in my rotary cutter. Wow, did it work nice. Why do I ever use dull, knicked blades?

But first I must cut a straight line through the bottom of the area below the violin. I am rather nervous about making a mistake, so I decided to use scisssors.

Here is the section I cut off. Now to get those violins centered. They are about 11 inches apart, so the size of this triangle will determine the size of the other triangles.

And, eureka, I have cut a triangle! What was I so afraid of?

Methinks the picture below is out of place. It happens to be one of the other blocks.

By putting four of my violin triangles together, I have come up with a block that looks like this:




And here is another block:

I should have taken a few more pictures. The main blocks are the ones that have the base of the triangles cut on the straight grain of the fabric (parallel to the selvedge--were you listening in home ec. class?) Then there are triangles that are cut from the areas in between the main blocks that have their base on the cross-grain of the fabric. The stripes on them run up and down, and I managed to cut them as mirror images of each other. When you add them to the original four squares, they end up looking like this:

I discovered that there is a certain order to adding the outside triangles, and the block above is wrong. In the next pictures you will see that by doing those outside triangles right, you get more designs between the squares.

When I laid these out on my kitchen island, I really began to get excited when I saw the designs forming between the blocks! Out of my two yards of striped fabric, I got ten main square blocks, but only enough other triangles to add to five of them. So, back to Joann Fabrics, where I bought another 1 1/2 yards so I would have enough of those triangles to finish them off. I will get some main blocks out of it, too, which I will probably put together a different way with sashing or something.

The quilt I want to make will hang in the area above the headboard of our bed. We have had a green pinwheel quilt hanging there for nearly ten years, so it is time for a change!

I will be updating you on my progress! I have been so thoroughly intrigued by it!

My thanks is to my daughter Jill for discovering a picture of a quilt on the internet, and figuring out how to make it, and sharing the idea with me. Here is what I have so far: