How do you acquire scrap half-square triangles? Easy! You use the ‘square’ method to make Square-in-a-Square units, or Flying Geese units which will both give you paired sets of HSTs. Or you acquire them when you join strips on the bias and cut off the excess triangles. Or you find you have cut too many for a project – when it tells you to make (say) 24 HST units and you absentmindedly cut 24 squares of each fabric only to end up with 48 HSTs. And sometimes you find you only need one out of the two you get from a square. What to do with them?
Firstly you should probably sort them out by size and then by colour or whether they are light, medium or dark. You could start a separate heap/box/bag for those that have already been joined into HST units. Only then can you really decide what they could be turned into.
But before we do that we could have a look at a few ideas and finished quilts – and it doesn’t have to be a big quilt, you could make a cushion, or a bag, or a table runner if you haven’t many triangles of the right size and shade.
So here are a couple of Ann Jermey’s quilts – with a rainbow of triangles but all with a white background
And then more muted with the triangles arranged into squares of one light and one dark triangle then set on point.
This one is a vintage quilt belonging to Ann and has some Quarter-Square Triangles added to the blue HSTs to make a Windmill block. The blues are not all the same.
This little Pinwheel quilt was made by Chris using the leftover triangles from a set of Flying Geese units.
All the Sawtooth Star blocks in this quilt were made with left-over triangles from Square-in-a-Square units made for another quilt.
And finally some photos from the design wall of a collection of blue and yellow triangles. Should they be alternated to make clearly defined stripes or maybe offset slightly or . . . ? How would you arrange them?
But then here’s another one Chris made earlier – much earlier (and maybe it belongs in ‘squares’ rather than triangles?). Long, long ago there were hardly any local quilt shops and we ordered fabrics from Strawberry Fair in Devon – send a stamped addressed envelope and receive a bag full of one inch squares cut from all their fabrics, send the order form back with the squares of the fabric you wanted to buy. Simple! But what to do with all those tiny sample squares? Chris joined some of them into nine patches – ‘light’ ones and ‘dark’ ones. These were then paired, right sides together and a seam stitched either side of the diagonal – giving a selection of scrappy half-square triangles. Turned into a bag, these are the two sides –
More scrappiness next week!
chris & barbara quilts 
1 thought on “Scrappy Sunday Half-Square triangles”