Triangle Paper and Half Square Triangles

For my birthday last month, my aunt gave me a project we had been working on for several Friday night sewing sessions... a package of blocks in black and white, and a few that needed to be sewn.

Some quilt shops sell a program called Buck A Block, and she had signed up for one of those.  You pay a pre-arranged amount, and monthly you get a mailing that includes two width-of-fabric strips of contrasting fabric and a pattern that is made with squares and half square triangles that are made with triangle paper.

There are many varieties of triangle paper.  Some is actually named Triangle Paper, some is called
Thangles, some can be printed from a computer program.  You can even draw your own if you wish.  The theory behind the paper is that you don't have to do the math, you don't have to worry about whether your points match, and pressing those pesky bias seams is easier.

The black and white blocks I was making were 6 1/2" finished, the patterns were for various blocks like the Friendship Star, the O block and others based on a nine patch layout.

The directions said to make positive/negative blocks, that is two identical blocks but with dark and light reversed on the second block.

Pardon the blurriness, it's the center of another picture.  Would that I had documented the entire process!!

After I had all the b&w centers done, that pattern said to make a bit larger HSTs and turn these little beauties into a 12.5" finished star block.

I love b&w blocks, and putting one color with b&w makes a striking quilt.  I have a bin of reds, so I dug in that and found a bunch of reds that were in the same color group, with prints, near solids and geometric patterns.

Awesome!  The next step is some sashing strips and cornerstones.

Here's the triangle process...

I used the kind that is printed from a computer program to make the larger HSTs.

You cut the triangles on the black line after sewing on the red lines.  Then you press open.

After that you can tear off all the paper.  That's a good job to do while watching TV.

After the paper is removed I went through and pressed open all the center seams.  On this pattern, this is the easiest way to put them together to sew.

I pressed them with my Little Wooden Iron.  Neat!

After that, trim off all the little dog ears.

My HSTs finish at 3 inches.  The dog ears are very small!

Sew two HST blocks together, making four sets.  Two sets get attached to the b&w center block.  Two get a background square sewed to each end.  After sewing the shorter pieces to the center, then the longer pieces to the resulting rectangle, I had this batch of blocks:

 

I have about a dozen more to go. 

 

Sew on!