I have now been initiated into world of half-square triangles that I am using for the modern baby quilt class I am taking at ThreadBear. Last week Ann taught me her favorite half-square triangle technique which uses the Quilter’s Magic Wand and the Tucker Trimmer both designed by Deb Tucker. With this method, I placed the laser line of the Quilter’s Magic Wand on the diagonal of the wrong side of a square of fabric with its right side facing the right side of a same size square (since both my squares were solids, I didn’t have to be careful with right and wrong sides).

I then drew lines that were 1/4″ from the laser line using a Frixion erasable pen. Then I stitched along both lines and cut the triangles apart at the diagonal.

The next step was to trim my 24 HSTs using the Tucker Trimmer and also my friend’s 24 HSTs because she is such a quilt newbie that she makes me look like a seasoned pro 🙂 I remember well the feeling of being overwhelmed I had this past fall, so I was happy to give her a hand.

If you would like to know more about the Quilter’s Magic Wand, watch this video of Deb Tucker demonstrating how she uses it with half-square triangles, hour glass units, combination units, fast-flying geese technique, little houses to create stars and borders, and snowball units. She also uses the magic wand to help her with precision-piecing which she used with a very cool migrating geese border on the quilt behind her in the video.

The next time I need some half-square triangles (maybe for the Midnight Mystery Quilt-a-long), I will probably try the more conventional half-square triangle technique of drawing the diagonal line and stitching one-quarter inch away from it on either side of the line. Do you have a favorite half-square triangle technique and/or tool for HSTs?

Linking up to Needle and Thread Thursday and Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?