I ran across this product a few years ago at Quilt Market. This updated 3.0 version now has flying geese units!
Make any size half square triangles, quarter square triangles and flying geese units. Find the size you need, click and just print the amount you need. There’s no waste, and no trimming around the units. It really is a time saving tool and I’m not frustrated because all my units are perfectly sized.
Here are just a few of our patterns that can be used with the Triangulations 3.0 CD (all are available in our online shop):
Tessellating Triangles
Lone Star
Overall Stars
Click Here To Read The Transcript
Hello, my name is Aimee Griffin, from overallquilter.com. And today I want to show you a product by Brenda Henning called Triangulations. It’s a CD, and it makes half-square triangles units, quarter-square triangle units and flying geese. This is what I used to make the tessellating triangle quilt right behind me, the half-square triangles and the flying geese units. So let’s go take a look at our tools.
For this project I’m using:
• Brenda Henning’s Triangulation 3.0 CD
• Papers for Foundation Piecing
• Tessellating Triangles pattern
When I wrote Tessellating Triangles, this was a pattern that was shown to me by a friend of mine, and she had worked out some half-square triangle units with the square in the center. And what I did was, I wrote up using squares and drawing from corner to corner, and then you would stitch on either side, or on each side right up the drawing line.
But after you did that, then you had to trim the unit down to the three and a half inch- half-square triangle. What the Triangulations CD does, it creates perfect half-square triangle units so that I don’t have to square anything down. I’m just going to stitch on those lines, and I’m going to cut on the solid lines.
So let me show you how this works. You take the CD and you put into your computer. And what you’re going to get is a pop-up that shows you the different things that you can copy. This is the half-square triangle units, quarter-square triangle units and flying geese units. And it also comes in different sizes.
I’m going to go ahead and click on the half-square triangle units. And that’s gonna take me to a different window that shows you how to make your copies and a great tutorial, step-by-step on what you’re going to be doing.
So I’ve taken, and I’ve made my copies onto my paper piecing copy and remember, I like to use the Papers for Foundation because, when you get ready to tear the paper off your unit, it’s so much easier for that to come off. So I’ve made my copies and you always want to make sure that you’re at a finished size. And you also want to make sure that the grid which is what the square is, measures seven and three-quarters (7¾) by seven and three-quarters.
Once you’ve taken your copies, I like to just cut leaving about an eighth of an inch (1/8) all the way around my solid line. Remember, your solid lines are your cutting lines, and your dotted lines are your stitching lines.
I’m going to take my two fabrics, right sides together and place that paper right on top. Now you’ll notice that when I do this, my fabric is slightly larger than my paper. I do this so that I can see and then, I can go back and trim that unit, that solid line, so that I do get that perfect half-square triangle unit.
So I’m going to take it to my sewing machine, and I’m going to start stitching following the arrows. You’ll notice that the arrow is out here, and then it goes inside, it goes outside, and then it goes inside again. On the opposite side is going to go this way, in, out, and in again. So let’s go ahead and take you to the sewing machine.
So I’ve gone around once, and I’m getting ready to go in the opposite direction. So I’m going to pull the paper out, my fabric out, and now I’m going to place it so that I can go in the opposite direction. I don’t know if you can see that, but I’ve also lowered my stitch. Just like paper piecing, you want to lower your stitch to a 1.5 so that your stitches are smaller because, once again, to tear the paper off, you might have some loose stitches if your stitches are too big.
Now that I have gone in both directions and I’ve got a great stitching line, I’m going to go ahead and cut right on top of those solid lines. And I start with the outside lines. Again, you want to make sure that you are right on top of those lines. (I notice that I’ve come off a little bit, so I’m going to go back and clean that up). But you want to make sure that you’re right on top of that line.
Once you have gone around the outside, then you can go ahead and proceed to cut the inside line. Again, I’m cutting on the solid lines. And I like to do my T first, and then I’ll take and cut my squares out. So this particular size, you get eight out of one square. And there’s my half-square triangle. You also want to cut on these little lines and that will get you a perfect half-square triangle unit. Once you have that triangle unit done, pinch it on the smaller side and pull it with your right hand.
And there is your half-square triangle unit. No need to trim this down, because of the paper you have and exact three and a half (3 ½) or three inch finished, when it’s sewn onto your block.
Both the Triangulations CD and the Tessellating Triangles pattern are available on our website.