Easy Peasy Charm Square Quilt (Part 2) ~ Half Square Triangle Quilt

Thank you for all your lovely comments on my Easy Peasy Charm Square Quilt Part 1.  Today I'll be sharing the second quilt I made using a Moda Charm Pack.  This time I chose a Regent Street Lawns Charm Pack... as the name indicates they are cotton lawn weight fabric, which means that not only are they are extremely soft to touch, they drape beautifully!  I combined the pretty lawns with a lovely background fabric by Art Gallery Fabrics, which also due to the high Pima cotton thread count, has a super soft feel too and complimented the lawn weight fabrics perfectly.

This time I decided to make a Half Square Triangle (HST) quilt, which I know if your beginner can sound a little daunting, but believe me, by using a Pre-cut Charm pack it comes together very easily.  Here's how....

As I've already mentioned, half of the initial cutting had already been done for me, by choosing to use a Moda Charm pack.  I used (40) out of the 42, 5" squares from the pack.  In addition, from 3/4's of a metre of the background fabric I then cut (40) 5" squares.  (The quickest way to do this is to cut (5) strips 5" x the full width of fabric and then subcut each of these into (8) x 5" squares.)

To make the HST units, I drew a diagonal line on the wrong side of all the background fabric 5"squares.

Then pairing a background square with a Charm Pack square and with Right Sides Together (RST) stitched 1/4" either side of the drawn line. 

I then cut using my rotary cutter along the drawn line, which yielded 2 HST units.

I repeated this process for the remaining 39 pairs to yield 80 HST units in total. 

I then did a mass pressing session, I first pressed the stitches to ‘set’ them, (this effectively beds the stitches into the fabrics, which helps reduce bulk, also helped by using my trusty Aurifil 50wt thread!)) then, I opened out the HST unit and pressed the seam facing towards the Charm Square fabrics, which were on the whole darker than the background fabric. 

Before moving on, if you're stitching along with me, now I would suggest, is the the time to go and grab yourself a cup of tea............ 

The next step was to trim the HST units so that they measured 4 1/2" square.  This involved shaving  literally the smallest amounts off, but this is the most important step to ensure that the end result was neat and accurate!

A Little Happy Top Tip...... I used my 6 1/2" ruler to trim my HST's.  For best results, line up the diagonal printed line on the quilting ruler with the diagonal seam line on the HST unit....I also have a rotating cutting mat which helps speed up this task considerably....mine is by OLFA.

Once trimmed I layed out my HST units balancing light and dark evenly across the quilt.....I find this step always takes the longest!  I chose an 10 by 8 layout with my HST units all facing in the same direction.   There are so many variations of this quilt that you can make, simply by changing how you lay the individual HST units.

To join together, I first chain stitched the individual HST units in to rows, pressing the seams on each row in alternate directions.....to the left on the top row, to the right on the second row, left on the third etc......... and then joined the rows together. I used a 1/4" seam allowance throughout.

After layering up my quilt top, with wadding and backing fabric, I hand quilted using my favourite Aurifil 12 wt thread in a lovely citrus green colour, which I'd been given as a sample.  I used Merchant and Mills straw needles with the Aurifil 12wt as they have a decent size eye on them.  They're also quite sturdy as I personally do not like my needle to bend when I'm hand quilting.  I also should mention that I prefer not use a quilting hoop.

  

For the backing fabric (you'll need 1.25 metres - 5 FQ units if purchasing) I chose a pretty Butterfly print from the Stella collection by Lotta Jansdotter and for the binding I chose for a pretty green floral from our yardage selection of Regent Street Lawns.  I cut four 2 1/2" strips full width of fabric.  If you're purchasing binding fabric, you will need to purchase 1/2 metre of fabric (2 FQ units) but you will have leftovers.  Alternatively, cut them at 2 1/4" and that way you'll get them out of a long quarter*.

* A little happy note......... as standard when 1 unit is added to your basket we will always send 1 Fat Quarter (FQ) .  We are however quite happy to send a Long Quarter (LQ) BUT you must add a note in the Special Instructions section at checkout to let us know that this is what you would like.

The finished quilt measures 32" x 40", so the perfect baby quilt!

Finally, if you do make any of my FREE projects from the blog, mum and I really do love to see them so please do send us a picture or alternatively if you're sharing on social media, please do use the #alittlehappytutorial or #prettyfabricsandtrims so that we can take a peek!!

Happy Stitches!