Trianglemania

Tuesday's blizzard was a real doozy--winds gusting up to 50 mph, bitter cold wind chills; and as near as we could figure, we got at least a foot and a half of snow. I don't know if I've ever seen it snow that hard. Yesterday we had another storm that started in the morning and finally stopped about midmorning this morning, and dumped another 10 inches. Monday the weatherman is predicting 5-8 inches, and there's another storm rolling in Wednesday.

I'm glad the snow is happening this month instead of in December. My older son was not able to get home from upstate New York for Christmas, so we packed everything up and took Christmas down to him. Wouldn't have gotten to see him if we'd had all these storms.

The neighbors spent all morning digging out from yesterday's storm, and there is just so much snow everywhere. Hubby had to rake the roof, and now there's a pile of snow nearly 6 feet high in the back under the kitchen window.

My sewing studio is in the basement of our home, but I keep a small sewing table and a machine upstairs in the spare bedroom. In the spring and fall, I like to sit up there and sew, enjoy the breeze coming through the window, listen to a few tunes, or just enjoy the quiet in the neighborhood.

Tuesday I sat in front of the window and sewed and watched the storm. I worked on a couple sets of triangles for two different quilts. These triangles were waste triangles left over from my Bali Stars quilt that I finished last year. I had bunches of them, so I used a few to make this mini a while back. 

I continued to make triangle units with the rest of the waste triangles and sewed up a bunch of larger half square triangle units as well. The project languished because I wanted a different layout from the mini and couldn't figure out what I wanted to do. Finally this week I came across a small photo in an old quilt magazine that used the same units. It was some scrap quilt book by Fons and Porter; but I recently saw this same design on Pinterest, so I really don't know who to attribute it to. Anyway, I love it, so I'm using it. There will be a couple of narrow borders, I think.

On Tuesday afternoon I also worked on some triangles for a quilt I'm making by Edyta Sitar of Laundry Basket quilts. She has gorgeous designs, and I have several of her books. In order to make a queen-sized quilt, I need 784 half square triangle units. I'm about halfway there, I guess, so lots of sewing left to do.

I have the Inklingo software by Linda Franz, and my new favorite way to make bunches of half square triangle units is to print out a grid on paper and sew them up. I could print directly to fabric if I wanted, but it's so much easier for me to see the lines on the paper, and I don't mind ripping the paper off after.

I think this must be the same thing as Thangles, but with Inklingo I have the ability to print out many triangles quickly and in multiple sizes. If you have neither Inklingo or Thangles, you could draw a grid yourself.

I layer my two fabrics right sides together, pin the paper to the fabrics, and then sew all the lines for the triangles.

The dotted lines are sewing lines, and the solid lines are cutting lines.

Once the triangles are cut apart, the dog ears are trimmed away, the paper is removed, and the triangles are ready to be pressed open. No further squaring up is necessary. Simple, precise, and fast.