This issue marks one year of The Scrap Basket! Thank you all for reading and for the encouraging feedback.
WHAT'S UP
I took a Glam Clam class with Latifah Saafir, which was fun of course, but that means another quilt is in the works! All is good, though, considering I learned a few things, so am pretty motivated to keep at it. And the second quarter of the Finish-A-Long has started up, so I've been busy supporting that too. What I'm most excited about are the improv blocks I need to do, one being from my own tutorial forX Marks the Improvfor our guild's latest giving quilt.
It's almost inconceivable that after a year of The Scrap Basket, we haven't explored half-square triangles yet! A quilter's basic building block, it really never gets old.
Michelle/Buttontree Lane and the Canberra Quilters created The Problematic Apricot, a stunning quilt arranging the 5" blocks simply but to awesome effect with those bright colors and circular quilting.
When I led the Faith Circle of do.Good Stitches in making HST Love, I asked my bee-mates to make two 18 1/2" unfinished blocks, each made up of four 9 1/2" blocks. Final construction went quickly, and even with a simplified palette, it was still very striking.
And I just love the modern feel ofAnne/playcrafts' Mountain Sunrise. Besides being a unique and wonderful palette, the block placement is everything.
[playcrafts]
My interest in HSTs was really piqued when I had some left from one project and just starting playing with them on my design wall. Thus Spiraled was born - one of my first original designs. Things didn't stop there though, as later I recreated the pattern less scrappy, and with a mixed low-volume background [Spiraled Jungle]; and again in Spiraled Underground, with a low-volume print as background and using just one fabric for the spirals. There's a tutorial if you're inclined to make your own version. Better yet, see what design you can come up with!
TUTORIALS & SUCH
:: The resources available for half-square triangles is extensive. Suzy/SuzyQuilts shares three of the most common construction methods in Three Different Half Square Triangle Techniques. She also has lots of great HST quilts on her blog - definitely worth a look-see.
:: My own Big Batch HSTs makes 18 HSTs and gives you the math to make even more.
:: Simple HSTs from Daisy/Ants to Sugar is cool in that she shows all sorts of ways to orient them.