Half square triangles

The idea for this blog came about from all the emails, phone calls, and texted images between Emily and me about the things were were making. We are constantly sharing ideas, blog posts we have read, techniques and patterns. We originally wanted the posts to be more of an interaction between us rather than a post from Emily one day and one from me the next but were not sure how to do that, at least in a clever kind of way. A reader commented one day that she wished there was a way to tell at the beginning of the post who the author was, Emily or me. We had a brainstorm. The format of our posts will change slightly; they will be in the form of letters to each other. We are new to this blogging thing and still learning how it all works and we suppose it will always be a work in progress, ever evolving. 

Dear Emily, 

I am almost finished with the photo quilt for Anthony's teacher. Thank goodness because it is being presented to her at 8:30 tomorrow morning! I just have to hand sew the binding down one more side and tack the hanging sleeve down. (never made one of those before, have you? It was easy peasy - I'll post photos tomorrow). The blocks are "attic windows," similar to this:

 Quilt Patterns By Janet Wickell

The problem with the attic window quilt block, though, are the set-in seams, as demonstrated here. I had 30 blocks to make and did not want to make it more complicated than it needed to be but wanted to use the attic window block. I found an easy way to make the blocks using this technique. Instead of having to sew partial seams, I made half-square triangles for the corners.

After marking two stitching lines a quarter of an inch on either side of the diagonal, I string pieced the squares:

String piecing is simply stitching several pieces together without cutting the thread between squares. Saves time and keeps your machine from "eating" the thread at the beginning of a block or sucking the corners down below the feed dogs. 

I cut them apart.

And pressed them open.

Ta da! Perfect half square triangles. The advantage to doing this, besides not having to cut triangles, is that you are not sewing on a bias edge which can stretch the fabric. 

Before piecing the block, I squared them up. I don't often do this. Should I? 

Tomorrow I will post pictures of the finished quilt!

xoxo Monica