Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Clue 2

I'm working on clue 2 of Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll.  It calls for 120 HST (half square triangles) made in groups of four, so I decided to use this method that I found on Missouri Star Quilt Company's website.

This is such an easy, cool way to make HST!

Basically, the method is this...

Cut two squares, place them right sides together, sew a quarter inch seam all the way around the outside.


Cut the unit on the diagonals.


Finger press the HST open.


Press open...carefully.  I finger press, press, then spritz with a dab of starch and press again.



Yes, they are on the bias, but I haven't found a problem with it...even before I was using starch.  As long as you're careful with them, there's no problem.

Next, they need to be trimmed down.


Once you've trimmed, you have a perfect 3 1/2" HST.



I did some experimenting to find out just how big to cut the squares and I found that the perfect size is 5¾". If you cut the squares at 5½", it's just too small, and if you cut the squares at 6", you waste a lot of fabric when you trim the squares.

Here's the trimmings left over if you use  5¾" squares.



I hope this helps those of you who are working on clue 2.  Clue 3 is coming this Friday!

4 comments:

sophie said...

If you cut your original squares on the bias, then your triangle square units would end up with edges on the straight of grain. It does look like a cook method for making half-square triangles 4 at a time.

Judy said...

Thank you for posting this! What a neat and easy way to do hst.

QuiltSue said...

That's so clever. I also had the same thought as Sophie about the original squares. I've never seen this before so I'll have to try it.

Calicojoan said...

You are on top of things. I am going to have to wait until after the holidays to start mine. Thanks for the tip on half square triangles.

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