January 02, 2013

HST's 8 in 1!

How do you make your half square triangles?  I've always been a two at a time gal myself.  That is until I started looking at how many of these little bundles of trouble are planned into my Mandala Quilt.  So I decided to go on the hunt for a different answer.  The answer I discovered is to do 8 at a time and it goes like this.
Sew like this
Yes, just four lines of stitches, which is easily chained to make the 64 HSTs I needed of this color combination.
Cut apart on White Lines

Press open and trim
To make these the size you need, take the block size you want - in my case 2" finished, 2.5" unfinished.  Multiply your unfinished number by two and add 1 for the seam allowance.  (2.5 x 2) +1 = 6.  Don't they look great?  I love this new blue fabric I picked up for a song at my local quilt shop.  I nearly bought the entire bolt I was so charmed by it.  

Hope all your projects are coming along well!

4 comments:

Kirsty said...

Love it! Genius!

QuiltSue said...

The blue is gorgeous, I can see why you thought of buying the whole bolt.

stitchinpenny said...

There is also a tutorial out there to do a fat quarter's worth at a time, but I can't find it right now. At the time I did it I was making a border with HSTs ( never finished) and found the tute and used it. I agree with QuiltSue that the fabric is amazing.

Vicki said...

Smart move, now this is a time saver. Love that blue fabric.