playing with half square triangles

The quilting bug has definitely taken hold in me. I have all these plans in my head for projects, and even fabric stacks ready and waiting. But cutting and sewing and getting things to match up as they should? That's still intimidating.

Love Patchwork & Quilting is a fairly new magazine that I'm in love with. I have only two regular issues and one digital issue, and I pore over them admiring every idea and detail. Then I go online and see blogs filled with beautiful quilts and I see even more on Instagram. And I become more smitten than I was, and I didn't think it possible.

Finally I decided that it was time that I try making some half-square triangles, or HSTs as they are often referred to. Issue four of Love Patchwork & Quilting has a sawtooth block pillow that is simple and charming, so I used that as a plan for my first project.

I've seen "easy" ways to sew HSTs, so I did a search for "easy half square triangles" and plenty of results came up. I followed a tutorial from About.com, which I found to be easy to do, though cumbersome, as that site often is (to me at least!). Here's the process I followed, in photos:

And voila! Half-square triangles! Which are actually squares made up of triangles! Is that confusing to anyone else?

The square up rulers I bought feel like life savers to me. The markings make it easy to create perfectly squared pieces with corners that I think are actually going to match up. This is a case where having good tools really does make a difference. (I found mine in the quilting section at JoAnn.)

What is fun about HSTs is that they are kind of like puzzle pieces. You can arrange them in so many ways to make so many different quilt designs! I found them quite relaxing to play with!

Plus, a little stack of quilty pieces is a very fine thing. I can't wait to put these together!