Half square triangle quilt tutorial

Remember this post ?
OK, so this is the tutorial for the quilt or at least my process of creating it.
Hope that you will be able to follow my directions and that they will be useful for your projects;)



I started with this beautiful bundle of some of my favourite Art gallery fabrics.



As the world of quilts and quilting is still very new to me, at the time, I had only one ruler available and that was the Olfa 2.5" ruler.



I created my first quilt without any ruler-I have just used the plastic nursery plate and a regular school ruler;)



So I just started with cutting the selected fabrics in 2" wide strips x WOF (in regular fabric 44/45"length-114 cm).



I had total of 52 strips.



So, I saw this technique on some blogs, called also tube quilting and I was delighted as it seemed like a quicker way to obtain more half square triangles. I realized that there was even the special ruler for this, called "strip tube ruler", but you can always use some square ruler, rotated 45  degrees
and mark your seam allowance line (with some masking tape eventually) according to the desired size of the triangle.

HERE, HERE and HERE you can watch even the great videos about that technique.



So the principle is this: just place 2 strips, right sides together and sew on both sides with 1/4 seam allowance.



Cut along as you go, re-positioning your ruler from one side(one seam) to another.



From each fabric strip (44-45" wide fabric), with this cutting method from selvedge to selvedge, I obtained the 20 (eventually even 21) 2 1/2 x 2 1/2" HSTs.



I had total of around 600 HSTs.
Open, press and trim them.



Now you can play and create so many different blocks, here are some of our thoughts....









But, than I decided to do the simple repetition, by doing the 9 patch block and rotating it on  45 degrees.

Here is the construction of the block- in simple, 2 color diagram:



I also decided to play a bit with the colors and shades, rather than doing just random color patching.



What I did with the colors is to divide the HST(before making the blocks) in 5 groups:

1. palest shades
2. pale shades with some medium accents
3. medium shades
4. medium shades with some dark accents
5. darkest shades





I also organized the blocks in the same groups once they were made.



As you can see, by the end of my process, I got a new ruler to help me with cutting the fabric excess from the final
almost 6 x 6" nine patch block.



I love this happy pile of the blocks: there were around 70 blocks at the end.



I just played with organization of the blocks, creating the final result-quilt.



Luckily, I had a great, experienced assistant along the way to help me with my process;)



Eventually I decided that it might be good if I use some numbers and calculations to realize the size of the final quilt.

So, I ended with this scheme that is using 60 blocks-total.
( I am using just 4 variations of the colored block as  easiest way to show the rows of blocks and cutting directions for edges):


 So, you may see that you need to cut 5 blocks horizontally an 6 blocks vertically to obtain the edge pieces.


And this is some kind of variation in shades-giving the effect that I wanted to achieve here. Obviously, with more saturated colors:)

The finished size of the quilt is approx. 37 x 43".
Great size for my little helper:)





Here is my finished top and the finished quilt.



There are lot more of pictures in my flickr set and some more info in my previous post



Hope this was helpful.
If you have some project to share using this or any of my tutorials or patterns, please post them to my flickr group.
I would love to see what you'll create:)
Katarina :)

Remember this post ?
OK, so this is the tutorial for the quilt or at least my process of creating it.
Hope that you will be able to follow my directions and that they will be useful for your projects;)



I started with this beautiful bundle of some of my favourite Art gallery fabrics.



As the world of quilts and quilting is still very new to me, at the time, I had only one ruler available and that was the Olfa 2.5" ruler.



I created my first quilt without any ruler-I have just used the plastic nursery plate and a regular school ruler;)



So I just started with cutting the selected fabrics in 2" wide strips x WOF (in regular fabric 44/45"length-114 cm).



I had total of 52 strips.



So, I saw this technique on some blogs, called also tube quilting and I was delighted as it seemed like a quicker way to obtain more half square triangles. I realized that there was even the special ruler for this, called "strip tube ruler", but you can always use some square ruler, rotated 45  degrees
and mark your seam allowance line (with some masking tape eventually) according to the desired size of the triangle.

HERE, HERE and HERE you can watch even the great videos about that technique.



So the principle is this: just place 2 strips, right sides together and sew on both sides with 1/4 seam allowance.



Cut along as you go, re-positioning your ruler from one side(one seam) to another.



From each fabric strip (44-45" wide fabric), with this cutting method from selvedge to selvedge, I obtained the 20 (eventually even 21) 2 1/2 x 2 1/2" HSTs.



I had total of around 600 HSTs.
Open, press and trim them.



Now you can play and create so many different blocks, here are some of our thoughts....









But, than I decided to do the simple repetition, by doing the 9 patch block and rotating it on  45 degrees.

Here is the construction of the block- in simple, 2 color diagram:



I also decided to play a bit with the colors and shades, rather than doing just random color patching.



What I did with the colors is to divide the HST(before making the blocks) in 5 groups:

1. palest shades
2. pale shades with some medium accents
3. medium shades
4. medium shades with some dark accents
5. darkest shades





I also organized the blocks in the same groups once they were made.



As you can see, by the end of my process, I got a new ruler to help me with cutting the fabric excess from the final
almost 6 x 6" nine patch block.



I love this happy pile of the blocks: there were around 70 blocks at the end.



I just played with organization of the blocks, creating the final result-quilt.



Luckily, I had a great, experienced assistant along the way to help me with my process;)



Eventually I decided that it might be good if I use some numbers and calculations to realize the size of the final quilt.

So, I ended with this scheme that is using 60 blocks-total.
( I am using just 4 variations of the colored block as  easiest way to show the rows of blocks and cutting directions for edges):


 So, you may see that you need to cut 5 blocks horizontally an 6 blocks vertically to obtain the edge pieces.


And this is some kind of variation in shades-giving the effect that I wanted to achieve here. Obviously, with more saturated colors:)

The finished size of the quilt is approx. 37 x 43".
Great size for my little helper:)





Here is my finished top and the finished quilt.



There are lot more of pictures in my flickr set and some more info in my previous post



Hope this was helpful.
If you have some project to share using this or any of my tutorials or patterns, please post them to my flickr group.
I would love to see what you'll create:)
Katarina :)