Making quarter square triangles the easy way

Are you caught up to cutting and sewing 100 half square triangles from yesterday’s post? Have you tried my tip on the 1 way to avoid finicky measuring when making HSTs?

I’m loving the Northcott Canvasfabric colors, looking forward to the seeing it finished!

Today, we’ll make 100 quarter square triangles (QSTs) using the 100 5⅜” x 5⅜” square fabric pieces we cut yesterday.

As with the HSTs we made yesterday, quilting reference books have something to say about QSTs.

Compared to yesterday when you added ⅞” to the finished block size to make an HST, today you need to add 1¼” to the finished size.

In other words, if your finished block size is 4” x 4” then cut 5¼” x 5¼” square. As I mentioned yesterday, if you have the perfect ¼” seam and your fabrics were cut perfectly to size, then yes, your finished square once sewn and pressed open will be 4½” x 4½” unfinished square.

I don’t know about yours but sometimes my seams are a little off, so, my 4½” x 4½” square would be off. To ensure that I get the result I want I add an extra ⅛” to give me a slightly larger fabric square. My work around? Instead of cutting my fabric squares 5¼” x 5¼”, I cut them 5⅜” x 5⅜” square. After all the trimming is done I get perfect results!

Now we need to separate the 5⅜” x 5⅜” squares.

Now to make two piles of squares:

• Pile 1: 50 – 5⅜” x 5⅜” squares: 25 cream, 12 orange, 8 yellow and 5 red
• Pile 2: 50 – 5⅜” x 5⅜” squares: 24 red, 16 lime green and 10 green

On the back of every piece of fabric from Pile 1 draw 2 diagonal lines going from corner to corner to corner as in the photo.

Once we’ve added the diagonal lines, we’ll pair the fabric squares with those from Pile 2 as follows:

Now we need to sew. If you look at a piece of fabric with the diagonal lines drawn on, we can see that the square is now divided into quarters. We’ll only sew on one side of the diagonal line and only up to the intersecting diagonal line (1 seam in each section/quarter), as shown in the next photo.

Now use a rotary cutter or scissors to cut along each diagonal line.

Pair all of these pieces together as follows, (like piecing a puzzle together!)

• 10 cream-green pairs and match with 10 red-green pairs
• 24 cream-red pairs and match with 24 orange-red pairs
• 16 cream-orange pairs and match with 16 yellow orange pairs

After the pairing is complete, sew both halves together then press.

Finally, as we did yesterday, we need to trim our QSTs to a perfect 4½” x 4½” square.

We’ve come to the end of another day of sewing and trimming to get the 100 QSTs we need for this quilt!

I know you’ll be back tomorrow as we put the blocks together to complete the quilt top. It’ll be amazing to see how all of these vibrant Northcott Canvas fabrics look when they’re all sewn together.