Half-Square Triangle Blocks - A Tutorial

A lot of the scraps that I've accumulated are either triangles or easily adaptable to triangles and therefore easily used for Half-Square Triangle blocks.    To make HST's easier and faster to make, I adapted instructions that I'd seen somewhere on the internet a year or more ago for the way I work.

One note before I go into the steps here - I make my HST's oversized and then trim to the size that I need for whatever project I'm working on at the time.   Or if I'm just using scraps up in order to have parts made in advance of a particular project then I'll trim the HST's to the largest size that I can out of the sewn block, typically that means 4.5", 3.5" or 2.5" as a finished size.

So having said that, here are the steps that I use for making HST's -

Step 1 -

Roughly cut triangles of your scrap fabrics.  Then cut oversized lengths of your background fabric.   For me I'll rough cut the background fabric at least an inch larger than the finished HST will be.  So if I need 3.5" HST's then I'll cut the background fabric at 4.5" wide by at least that amount or whatever the length/width of the fabric that I'm cutting it from is.

Step 2 -

Lay one triangle face right side down to the right side of the background fabric.    Stitch the diagonal seam across both pieces.

Step 3 -
Turning the next triangle so that it faces the opposite direction of the first, sew the diagonal seam.

Step 4:

Cut the sewn pairs apart.
















Step 5:
Lay your ruler down on top of the first pair.  Line the finished size that you want the HST to be along the seam line.   In the picture below, I've lined up my ruler at 3.5" on both sides, this will give me a finished 3.5" HST.  Continue till you have all of your HST's trimmed to size.

Step 6: 

Press blocks open and have fun making your project!

Gratitudes: 

- Spring Break is here.  =)

- Travel was safe to and from the latest chemo appt.  A real blessing given how drowsy I was from the double dosage of benadryl.