As you know, I can’t get enough of crafty classes! I recently attended a blog conference, and they offered hands-on classes as well as business and blogging classes. So of course I worked some of the hands-on classes into my schedule. I made a Half Square Triangle Pillow, and I love love love it!
It is made from the basic blocks of quilting called Half Square Triangles, or HST. It’s basically 2 triangles sewn together on the long seam to make a square that’s half one color and half another color on the diagonal. It’s the building block to a ton of quilt patterns. I used the blocks to make a Herringbone Pattern, and I’ll show you how!
I’m really love how it turned out. It’s a pillow cover and then there’s a pillow form that slides into it.
Half Square Triangle Pillow
So as I was saying, the pillow is 16 squares sewn together. And it’s all about how you arrange the HST. For example, if you put them all the same way, with white on the right and color on the left…
Then you’ll get a pillow like I made in the past, my Rainbow Quilted Pillow:
But this time around I wanted to try something different, so I aimed for a herringbone pattern. During the class, I started sketching things out on the back of my instruction packet, so I could see which way the blocks needed to go… You start with every other column being flipped, like below:
And then you arrange each block so the colors like up like this:
I love that little punch of color on the side 😉
So basically you sew it all together, then you “quilt” , or sew on the top of everything. You can see my quilt lines outlining each color blocking:
It was a fun time!