Tuesday, June 10, 2014

HST overload

Hello again! I am back from my conference, which was very good, and ready to hit the sewing room again. I came home to this:


The peonies are finally blooming! Happy dance!

I've learned not to take any sewing with me to conferences because I never have time to work on it and when I finally get back to the hotel room I'm exhausted, so I haven't sewn in a while. Let's see what kind of mischief we can get into today. . .

Half-square triangles have been all over quilting blogs recently, mostly because Vicki Welsh is hosting an HST quilt along over at Field Trips in Fiber. I happen to be the personal owner of literally hundreds (maybe a thousand) half-square triangles that I have saved from various projects. Let's pull some of them out, shall we?

First, I have these:


These are big leftover HSTs from the original Portugal quilt. (a picture of it is HERE) These are about 4 inches square, and I have 24 of them. No real clue what to do with them, but I should probably put them with these from the same fabrics:


Can you tell I really liked that fabric and didn't want to waste a single bit? I didn't bother pasting these up on the design wall because they are only 1 1/2 inches square. Plus, there are 384 of them. I am not making this up. 384. I'm going to have to really play around to put these two together.

Then there are these HSTs:


These are made from a couple of Fig Tree fabrics and were made from the cut-off parts of larger HSTs. (Clearly, I can't bear to throw away any usable fabric!) There are 69 of these babies, each of them currently measuring 2 inches. I kind of like the way they're pasted up here, so again, I'll play with that and see what I can come up with. I also think I can manage to scrounge up another couple of scraps of the same fabric to finish with an even number.

I also have 54 of these lovely 3 inch turquoise HSTs:


I like this layout! It looks like the beginning of a happy quilt.

There are also these HSTs, leftover from another project:


These are also 3 inch squares, and I have 32 of them. Potholders? I do love the broken dishes block.


Finally, there are these:


These are the result of a colossal mistake I made when attempting to make a quilt from a pattern. These are 2 1/2 inch HSTs, unfinished, which will make them 2 inches finished. I was supposed to make them 3 inches so that they finished at 2 1/2 inches. I think you can imagine what happened when I realized my mistake. They've been in a bag for a while. But just putting them up here on the wall makes me feel better, and I'm really liking the fields and furrows layout. There are plenty of these to make a nice quilt center, at least 100, probably more. Plus I have a bunch of the original fabric left to fill out the borders and such. We'll see how it comes together.

That's what I'll be playing with this week.  Well, in addition to this:


Could that be pieces of Fiesta Pinwheels ready to be made into blocks? It just might be!

Everybody have a great week, and come back Friday for another exciting episode! I'm pretty sure there will be a quilt finish to show off!

Linking up with Connie and Lee again, and the awesome Vicki Welsh. Come check out everyone's projects!

3 comments:

Connie Kresin Campbell said...

Looks like you are having a lot of fun playing with your HSTs!! I know I seem to have a lot of them too. Your peonies are beautiful! Thanks for sharing at Linky Tuesday! Freemotion by the River

Rachel said...

Lovely peonies, I'm just waiting for mine to pop open. That is a LOT of HSTs, and a lot of little ones especially! Here I thought the 1.5 inch finished HSTs I was just using were small. My favorite is the final set, and they're already trimmed! Win! ;)

Unknown said...

Love the peonies. I really need to investigate growing peonies...

Love the turquoise HST's - love the arrangement. I agree - looks like a very happy quilt!

Here via WIP Wednesday.