Hi welcome to Missouri Star Quilt Companies, beginning block series! I’m Jenny and
today we’re going to learn how to make a half square triangle. These are so versatile
and so fun.
The first thing you’ll want to do is you’ll want to cut four squares that are contrasting
fabric and they can be any size as you’ll see. Now generally when people make a four
square triangle you’re going to draw a line on the back of your square with a pencil because
you’re going to sew on either side of that line.
I however have a tip for you, this is a trick that has worked very well for me and makes
it so much easier, especially if you have a lot of half square tangles to do.
What were going to do is we’re going to press them corner to corner, across the block
diagonally, and we’re going to press the other one, that gives us a line and we don’t
have to spend hours with our rulers and our pencil drawing it.
Now what will do is were going to open this up and we are going to lay our other square
on top of it just like that and as I turn this over you can see the line is very visible
to us. Now were going to take this to the sewing machine and sew on either side of this
line.
We’re here at the sewing machine and we’d like to put our presser foot down right on
that line. The outside edge goes right on that line and it’s a quarter of an inch
on the presser foot and so as we sew along that it’s going to be the first of two triangles
we make out of this block.
Now were going to flip this around, give us a little bit of thread again put your presser
foot on the pressed fold in the middle and sew along. Now because we’re going to
make two of these blocks that are going to give us four squares.
We’re just go ahead and lead the next block in under the presser foot with the presser
foot staying on the pressed fold line, or drawn pencil line.
You might prefer that drawn pencil line, and we’re going to flip it around and sew this
side as well, there we go, now were going to take these off, and trim these threads,
and go back to the ironing board.
Now we have our two squares and there pressed on either sides of the fold. And we're
going to cut right down the middle with a rotary cutter or with scissors, my scissors
are handy so I’m just going to use my scissors.
If I had a lot to do I’d use a rotary cutter. And we’re even going to use the pressed
fold as a line for our cutting.
Now we’re going turn them dark side up. So these are all dark side up and we are going
to press them to set those seams and this is kind of easy because we can do it all at
once then we will lift the dark side and press toward the dark.
Look at that nice half square triangle you can see the contrasting colors and we’ve
made four in the time it takes to sew two.
Now a four square triangle can be used for all sorts of things. If you put it together,
this way, line up all of your squares. If you line up your square with the light towards
the middle you make a square we like to call love letters.
You can also turn it with the dark to the middle and it gives you a completely different
look. Now if you want to make a pin wheel you can do that by putting your darks to the
center in this manner.
And that makes a fabulous little pin wheel, and pin wheels really are one of the favorite
blocks; they really are one of America’s favorite blocks.
And now if you like also you can keep them directional, so they go this way
and set them up, you would just sew them together on this line a quarter of an inch. And you
can make all kinds of designs, so here is your finished half square triangle.
A half square triangle is a versatile triangle that you can use in many different blocks
and we’ll be showing you different ways to use them as we go along in this series.
Thank you for joining us for Missouri Star Quilt Companies, Beginner Block Series, happy
quilting!