Making Half Square Triangles

I've been a busy bee lately finishing up projects and writing new patterns, so today I thought I would give you a little snippet of one. I made the quilt at right for the Michael Miller challenge to the Modern Quilt Guild. I call it tilt. I'm not quite ready to release the pattern yet, so here is a tutorial from the pattern on making half square triangles

When quilters talk about half square triangles, we are really talking about a square block that is made up of two right triangles. There are several ways to make them, and today's tutorial is about my favorite.

Obviously you could cut two right triangles and just stitch them together. But that is always a little tricky. You have to line them up just right to end up with a truly square block. 

The easiest way for me to make perfectly square units quickly starts with two squares that are larger than the finished half square triangles. In today's example, I cut two 4 inch by 4 inch squares to end up with two 3 ½ inch half square triangles which when sewn into a quilt top will finish at 3 inches square.

Other tutorials will tell you to calculate the size of the square you need to cut by taking the size of your finished square and adding 7/8 of an inch. However, I like to add a full inch as it gives me a bit of fudge room to square up the block after sewing and pressing.

Layer the two squares with right sides together, and with your ruler and a washout marking pen (or any fabric marker you prefer) make a diagonal line on the back of one piece of fabric. Generally choose the fabric where the line is going to show best. Here I have drawn the line on the white fabric.

At the sewing machine sew a scant quarter inch seam on one side of the line, removing pins as you sew.

Flip the piece around and sew another seam on the opposite side of the line. Trim your threads and return to the cutting board.

Use your ruler and rotary cutter and divide the piece along the line you drew (and between the two seams). Now take the two pieces to the ironing board and press each open, pressing seam allowances toward the darker fabric.

If you are anything like me these two half square triangles might be a bit wonky. This generally happens because the steam used in pressing has stretched the fabric just a bit. Never fear! That is why we cut the original squares at 4 inches instead of 3 ⅞ inches. Go back to the cutting board and using a 4 ½ inch ruler (or whatever ruler you have), trim up your square to be exactly 3 ½ inches. The advantage of this specialized ruler is that you can line up the diagonal on the ruler with the diagonal on your square to make sure you take extra fabric from the sides equally.

Voila! Two half square triangles in the time it would have taken you to make one. This is the method I always use if I want to make lots of half square triangles but they need to be from different fabrics.

If you need a big bunch of half square triangles that are all the same, the easiest way is to take two much larger squares, sew around the outside edges and then cut twice diagonally, but that is a story for a different day.

Scale

I’ve been playing again.

I’ve been making smaller versions of the Sugar Block of the Month Club blocks. This project is partly inspired by fact that Amy Gibson has left final quilt design up to each quilter. That set me to thinking about how I could do something different and interesting with twelve pretty basic blocks. Around the same time I took a look at the March lesson from the Craftsy Block of the month, and Laura Nownes was talking about drafting and using it to resize a block.

Though I’m pretty comfortable with quilt math and don’t generally bother to draw everything out, this seemed like a good exercise to work on in front of the TV. The drawing above is for the quarter size block. That is, I reduced a 12 x 12 finished block to a 6 x 6 finished block.

Here is the same scaled down version of the January block.

Apparently some quilters are afraid of drafting, and that’s a shame because it can hold you back from designing your own quilts. The truth is, if you can draw it on eight to the inch graph paper, you can figure out how to cut it out with a quarter inch seam allowance. If you have never attempted drafting, just take a look at the March installment of the 2013 Craftsy Block of the Month. You will be surprised at how simple it can be. Then get busy thinking up your own blocks.

I kind of thought I was done with this experiment, but then I got to doodling and decided to draw a  3 x 3 block.

It seemed doubtful that I could manage crisp points on something so small, but voila! I think it would be fun to use all twelve blocks in three different sizes with quite a lot of negative space in between them all. It sure could lead to interesting quilting possibilities.