I just had to try it!

Remember I posted a picture similar to this the other day?

I am using hundreds of 2" squares to make half-squares triangle blocks that I am then trimming down to 1 1/2" squares - one at a time. I want my Jubilee quilt to be scrappy, very, very, scrappy with hardly any blocks alike and so this is the best way I know how to do it.

Well, after reading this wonderful post at Collector With A Needle about the mass production of half-square triangles I decided I had to give it a whirl.  Only I took it up a notch.  My pictures and descriptions below will make more sense if you go and look at the her post above first. She uses two busy fabrics on each side....which gave some wonderful results.

Pictured below are the steps I followed and at the end of this post I will tell you what I learned.

I decided to use three light fabrics and four darks.  You'll notice the lights are vertical and the darks are horizontal.  I measured to be sure all of their seams will fall within the blocks to look even scrappier. I used 4" wide strips and just cut them a little longer than needed for the paper.

Now you can see I have the right sides together, lights vertical, darks horizontal and the paper on top.

The paper product that I am using is called Triangle Paper and is the 1" finished size.

Here is the Triangle Paper sewn through all three layers.  At this point you rotary cut on the solid lines - then remove the paper.

This shows the variety of squares that I ended up with...using three light and four dark strips.

What I learned:

• it would be better to vary the colors of the fabrics even more - I tried to keep the lights similar and the darks similar just so they were "busy" but I ended up with very similar blocks throughout
• try for fabrics with splotches of color and geometrics - the green floral is a good one, and the two middle darks because they change colors and shapes throughout the blocks.  The yellow geometric is OK too.
• overall what is missing in these blocks is just the variety of colors

Will I use these in the current Jubilee project I am doing?  Probably some....but not all.  I don't want that many repeats.  There are 70 blocks here that look too much alike to me.  But I won't throw them away.  They will go in my "1 1/2" box" where I keep all my other half square triangle blocks for future projects.

I think I may try this again with more color variety and if I get something much better I will post my results.  I will definitely try it again in the future when I want  to speed up the mass production of scrappy.  This was a great idea. Many thanks to Collector with a Needle for initially sharing this!

If you try this - please share it and let me know how it comes out for you.

Scrappy and happy-

Judy

P.S.  I am going to tag this on here on Monday....check out what others are doing on their design walls at Patchwork Times Monday link up.