Just when you think you have all the quickest ways another comes along! Friend BJ recently told me about a new[to us] way of making four HST's at a time, lightning fast!
Of course I had to put it to the test and decided to make HST's for another baby quilt I think it's the seventh this year already!
You begin by cutting two squares of your contrasting fabric, this works for any size square or triangle. I used 9" squares and got 6" triangles.
Place right sides together and sew all around the outside with a 1/4" seam.
Cut corner to corner both directions.
I took down a new tool to do the cutting, a rotating cutting board, boy does it make it easy to do multiple cuts on a single item.
You will end up with four perfect HST's so easy it's almost sinful,LOL!
A word of caution, if you are using directional fabric as I did for one, you will need to decide if you care if they all go different directions or else choose a particular plan and stick with it for every block. I chose the latter idea.
You can see that mine all came out exactly 6", but you could make larger or smaller depending on your original square.
Needless to say I am totally stoked on this, it is my new favorite quilting secret! By putting it on my blog I have blabbed to all and sundry now so I hope you can use this next time you make HST's-if you didn't already know about it!
PS. "Pirate " reminded me about the bias on the HST's-I did think about it and even wondered if it would be an issue but I sewed more than 40 of them together with no stretching. If you were concerned about it you could starch the fabrics before you begin, but I think as long as you are aware that you're dealing with bias, and reasonably careful you'll not have a problem!
My quilt turned out perfectly square.
Here is the completed quilt,
freehand folk-art flowers for the quilting motif. The clown fabric is one of my recent purchases, but the other two came from stash as did the backing,
which had to be pieced to make it large enough!
No label yet, we are not sure of the baby's name, though we know it's a girl.
when you do the corner-to-corner cut, aren't the resulting outside edges of the HST on the bias?
ReplyDeleteIt sure seems like a nifty way to make HST, but I think you would need to remember about those outside edges ... they'll have a tendency to stretch. If you remember and take care, then this is a good alternative method to have in your arsenal. :-)
I saw this once a few weeks back, and for the life of me could not remember how to do it....and it is not hard!!! Thanks for the post. I usually shy away from HST, they intimidate me for some reason....maybe this way, it wont!
ReplyDeleteThanks for letting me in on your secret! I love HSTs and will give this method a try. Looks like way too much fun, and time saving too!
ReplyDeleteI love this idea! Looks like a good one to use a little sizing or starch on your fabric to help with the bias/stretching. Is there formula for other sizes?
ReplyDeleteGreat time saver!! We have a local gal who has been quilting and teaching classes for years and seems to know every tick in the book when it comes to making quilting easy.. I love people like that!
ReplyDeleteAdorable quilt and a great technique! Thanks for sharing...you know I'm going to try this!
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