Sunday, June 10, 2012

HST Stencil

I was very fortunate to win a give away recently from the Quilting Gallery at the 'not so basic quilting tools' post.
These stencils allow you to mark your fabric to construct half square triangles. I'd seen them in blogland but didn't know where to get them. Now I can tell everyone you can get your own at Sunday Best Quiltworks.
I rough cut two squares from complementary contrasting fabrics. I followed the directions on the stencil label and there is also a video on you-tube.
I prepped my fabric by using a little spray starch and ironing the pieces right sides together. I pinned the stencil on and used a chalk pencil to mark the sewing line and a lead pencil to mark the cutting line (I used different colours to help reduce confusion - I need that).
After sewing, I chopped them up as directed, pressed to the dark side and trimmed the ears.
The hst's were pretty accurate, except I did discover that the white fabric was a poly or poly/cotton blend and didn't behave well (it had been given to me as I usually try to buy good cotton fabrics for quilting).
I give the stencils an A+ rating and consider them a valuable addition to my quilting tools.
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6 comments:

Jane's Fabrics and Quilts said...

Oh do I need this! Thanks for the post!

Allie said...

How neat is this - LOVE your hst's! I have an hst quilt planned, this looks like a valuable tool. Congrats on your win!

Julia said...

Congrats Shari..that is so cool and so easy.
Love your tri's...hmm looks a great tool to have.
Julia ♥

Lurline said...

Fascinating - could take a lot of frustration trying to achieve accuracy!
Hugs - Lurline

JandyOz said...

HSTs scare the daylights out of me but you've made it look easy. Must get one of those stencils. Thanks for sharing.

Simone de Klerk said...

I've never seen this. Looks like an easy and fast way to make HST. Did you have to size them seperately afterwards?


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