Scrappy HST (Half Square Triangles)

I am working on a quilt based on the Missouri Star Quilt Company tutorial for the Pecking Order quilt. When I saw her make it with a white background, I immediately wondered what it would look like with a black background.

And what do you know...soon after that, I came into a lot of black scraps. (Seriously, we bought 300 yards at work to make some hoods, and I got all the cut offs. Lots of rectangles about 15" x 8".) So I figured I would give the quilt a try. (I talked about starting it in this post.)

I cut lots of squares from bright fabrics and sewed them to the corners of 5" black squares. At the right you can see a bit of the layout - I had to test that the layout in my head worked in real life and that it would be conducive to assembling the whole top. (And, check!)

I decided to take the quilt one step further and do a pieced border of stars as well. Finished size 5". (So lots of little pieces.)

These small border stars will be made with hundreds of HST (half square triangles).

I had a few done (above), but pulled it out the other day to work on some more. I needed the final piece to be 1.75". I make HSTs by sewing on both sides of the diagonal and getting two blocks out of two squares. (This means you never have to cut out triangles-thank goodness.)

Usually you cut two squares of different fabrics to place together and sew, but once I had the black squares cut, I realized I didn't have to cut the contrasting fabric to size. As long as I sewed along the line marked on the black square, it would come out right. I was going to be trimming all of the blocks after they were sewn anyway so why cut them twice?

The black squares were cut at 2.25" (because you're sewing on both sides of centre, it has to be bigger than the final size you want (1.75" in this case)). I had some 2.5" scrap squares and just put them together with the black ones.

But I also had weird scrap shapes and I just put the black squares on top of them too. As long as the scrap was the same size or bigger than the black square, it was good to go. (See top row, third from left; bottom row, first and third from left.)

At one point I had a fabric I wanted to use, but it didn't cover the entire black square. No problem...just line up a straight edge with the diagonal line and sew that side.

"Top side" when sewing. The centre diagonal line is marked
with a ceramic pencil. The other two lines are stitching lines.

For the other side, just grab another small scrap and line up a straight edge with the diagonal on the other side.

"Bottom side" of the same square. It will be cut apart
where the two fabrics meet anyway.

Maybe everyone everywhere has been doing this already, but I haven't seen it. I found it so freeing to just grab scraps to match with a black square and still get good results.

Once they're all cut in half, it was time to press them. Look, I'm using my new travel iron:

It's so cute! The small size is nice for working on the smaller pieces. (It may also be nice for larger pieces so that it doesn't mess up seam allowances in areas I'm not trying to iron, but I haven't tried it yet.)

Final step is the trimming. This is why some people don't like this method. The idea is that you make them slightly oversized and cut them to the correct size. It's a "cheater" way to get an accurate piece. (And by "cheater", I mean clever.)

Trimming scraps is no harder than if you had sewn two squares together.

1. Lay the HST so that the diagonal line is parallel to the 45 degree line on your ruler.

2. Line up the ruler so that the 45 degree line is on the seam and the full measurement of your final square (1.75") is on fabric.

3. Trim the right side and top:

4. Rotate the piece 180 degrees so the cut sides are now on the bottom and left side:

5. Line up your ruler so the 45 degree line is on the seam and the lines of your final measurement line up with the bottom and left side.

6. Trim the right side and top:

And you have a 1.75" HST ready for the next step.

And then repeat 255 more times.

Road Trip to Quiltville, USA

I was in Missouri a couple weeks ago visiting my in-laws. We happened to be only about an hour from the Missouri Star Quilt Company. Why it took me this long to learn that, I have no idea!

So we picked a day and my two mothers-in-law and I headed to Hamilton, Missouri, also known as Quiltville USA.

Why the fuss? Why all the excitement? Well MSQC has become quite a thing in the quilting world. The owner, Jenny, puts out great videos on youtube every week and they have made themselves known for selling precut packages (especially online).

It all started when Jenny's kids were worried she wouldn't have anything to do when they all left the house. So they bought her a longarm quilting machine, you know, to keep her busy. They had no room for it in their house so they bought an empty building in the town to house it. (I believe it was the old library.) The building cost less than the quilting machine did.

From professional longarm quilting, she moved into selling fabrics and long story short, a lot of the family is involved in running this big business that now owns about eight store fronts in town. (That's about half of downtown Hamilton.) The company also has a conference center where they host classes and overnight retreats.

And that has spawned a whole local economy centered on quilters. There are B&Bs for groups that plan quilting retreats there so they can be close for shopping. All of them advertise having a large room where you can quilt while you stay there.

The company also has packages for buses full of quilters that come from all over. Anyway, all that is to say it has become a destination spot. (Hamilton is also the hometown of JC Penny, but that's not quite as big a draw.)

We had a lovely time perusing all the shops. They have them organized by type of fabric (like moderns, juvenile, licensed prints, batiks, reproductions, etc.).

Here we are in the main store.

I went ahead and bought anything I really liked. :)

I found a charm pack (5" squares) in soft red, cream and blue (left side of picture):

and then found the three pieces of yardage (on the right)  that could go with them. What will this be? I have no project in mind at this time but sometimes the fabric comes before the pattern.

Here are some more precut packages I took home:

Two shibori packs (left), a mini charm (2.5" squares) of light neutrals, a layer cake (10" squares, on right) of various neutrals with text, numbers, music or map motifs, and a charm back (bottom middle) of more blue and white fabric which have the look of Delft blue pottery.

I think the shibori caught my eye because I had tried to sign up for an indigo dyeing class at Squam. Before I found out that I didn't get in, I already had thoughts of making a quilt from the fabric I would dye there. I guess the quilt idea stuck in my head and I decided I didn't have to actually make the fabric myself. :)

I found a few batiks that I just love:

I believe I got a half yard of the three on the right since I don't have a plan for them. The blue squares is my favorite batik ever right now. The blue on the left was purchased to be binding for my Nocturne Star quilt.

Here are a few random half yard or fat quarter pieces I picked up:

Obviously they weren't purchased as a set to go together but I like them each for different reasons.

I was keeping an eye out to see if there was a fabric that I could use with some of my leftover nine patch blocks to make a baby quilt for a coworker who is expecting. I saw a piece of this navy airplane fabric in a fat quarter bin:

I was thinking two fat quarters would do the job, but I could only find one! I went to the register to ask if they had it in yardage and they didn't...in that store. A bunch of clicking on their keyboards, and then they told me just what store I could find it in. I borrowed the fat quarter to show at the next store and found it no problem. And of course, found other color ways and other fabrics in the line! Oh my!

I was able to restrict myself to the two colors you see above. I ended up getting a yard of each and thought I would use the light one for the back of the quilt.

It wasn't until I was cutting up this fabric (yes, I have used it already!) that I noticed the cute way they have done the color code on the selvage:

When printing fabrics, a dot of each color used is put on the selvage. (They do it for some part of the printing process, but it's also very handy if you're trying to match a color in the fabric.) But this fabric used different airplanes silhouettes to map out the colors instead of dots. Isn't that too cute!!

Finally, I bought a couple bags of scraps and cut offs:

I looked through all the bags (without opening them) and found the ones with the most fabric I like. I don't know what yardage I got because they just put a minimum weight in the bag, but it looks like quite a bit for my money. And you certainly get a wider variety.

It was a fun day. Well, we were pretty much done by lunchtime, but you know what I mean. Not something I need to do every year, but every other year--I could see that!

Downtown Hamilton, Missouri