H_Ts Process

This quilt started with my love of chain piecing Half Square Triangles in bulk - I dug into my solid-color fabric scrap bin for every piece of fabric that resembled a triangle, with the intent of piecing a lot of them with no planned outcome.

I pieced them in long chains, matching colors together, which was a fun process. As I pieced them, I realized that due to variance in shape and size, they are coming out as both half-square triangles and half-rectangle triangles - so I’m calling the project “H_Ts” to account for this. As more and more accumulated, I started imagining what they might look like as a giant smooshy quilt all together:

But other projects came to the fore, and these little babies came down from my wall while I worked on other projects for a while. AND THEN this week, I was listening to Zak Foster and Amanda Nadig in a workshop on the Quilty Nook talking about working in a series - Zak mentioned taking a found garment, cutting it into 4 pieces, and making a series/collection of small quilts that had that cohesive element and a coordinating palette

That led me to wonder - do I have a garment I would want to cut up? And/or what material would I want to break into pieces to make a bunch of mini quilts out of?

THAT led me instantly back to that pile of scrappy HSTs/HRTs - and the next phase of the project was underway!

I pulled out the leftovers and finished piecing what I wanted to - there were a few larger pieces/repeating colors that I decided to throw back in the bin (so I do still have SOME triangles in my solids scrap bin!)

Then I cleared my design wall and sorted the H_Ts into groups, moving them around until I liked the groupings

groupings in progress

I started piecing them one pair per group at a time - this felt like more of a flow than piecing each “block” or mini quilt together. I was planning to make each into a separate mini quilt, and had the thought of quilting them separately as a spiral - what would it be like to quilt a spiral, but break it up between and among a bunch of small pieces?

So I found a soft crinkly old piece of striped fabric and started placing them on, to see if I liked that as background and if I had enough of it to cut into background pieces for each small quilt….but then I LOVED how it looked, with 6 pieces on that background…new direction!

I played with options/orientations, then decided I wanted raw edge applique because I love the thin lines and unfinished edges and it feels like tucking them under would lose a lot of the scrappy feel.

So that’s where I am now, appliqueing each piece to the background - initially I was planning on a blanket stitch but when I started, running stitch is what came out, and thats going to allow for a much quicker finish!