Making Do When Quilting Half Squares

Making Do When Quilting Half Squares is a funny title for a quilt tutorial, isn’t it?

There are many things that this tutorial is not.

This is not about half square triangles, but I do have a tutorial for that!

This is not a Made and Found quilt tutorial.  These ARE Made and Found quilt blocks, and you can find information on how to find the patterns in this blog post.

This is not a marking lines for quilting tutorial, but you can find that at the link.

This IS a tutorial for what to do when you have a bunch of quilt blocks and need to settle on a layout for the quilt top, as well as what to do when you don’t have quite enough blocks to make the layout work as well as absolutely no left over fabric with which to make more blocks.

Made and Found Quilt

The Made and Found Quiltalong started last February and included 36 quilt blocks over 36 weeks, plus 6 bonus blocks scattered throughout the 36 weeks.

I chose to make my blocks with scraps from the Hexie in a Hexie quilt pattern, and I used my scraps so efficiently that I was able to make 38 of the 42 blocks more or less according to the pattern, and then I finished out the blocks with four 64-patches.  That’s blocks that are 8 by 8 and made of teeny, tiny pieces.

When the quiltalong ended, I needed to come up with a plan for a quilt top layout.  Since the blocks are sort of busy, I knew I wanted to use some sashing to help break up the busy spots.  I got some navy blue for the corner stones and the binding and a gold star print for the sashing.

Making Do When Quilting Planning a Block Layout

Knowing that I Wanted to use sashing, I decided to set my blocks on point. 

I started by placing 20 blocks on point.  That’s 20 of my 42 total blocks.

Then, I filled in the open spaces with 12 additional blocks.  At this point, 32 of the 42 blocks are accounted for.

I counted and found that I would need 7 half blocks diagonally to fill in the sides.  That’s 39 of the 42 blocks.

Finally, two half blocks to make the corners.  41 of 42 blocks. 

Making Half Blocks

At this point I had a plan for how to use half blocks, and needed to pick which blocks to use.

I made the corner blocks first, and I simply picked two blocks that head a seam through the center of the block and cut those seams apart.  If I had done a better job of planning ahead, I could have just made those two blocks without sewing that final seam in the first place.

Making the diagonal half blocks was only a little bit harder.  Some of the blocks came together with the final seam being the diagonal seam, so those were easy to cut apart just like the blocks for the corners.

A few blocks were a little bit more complicated, and this is where the “making do” part of this tutorial comes in. 

For these blocks I cut them in half diagonally. 

Yikes!  It’s harder mentally and emotionally to slice up a quilt block than you might imagine.

I cut 1” strips of the navy blue fabric that will be the binding, and I sewed it to the long edge of these half blocks.

Pretty?  No. 

Functional?  Yes.

These strips of blue will be entirely hidden under the binding once the quilt is complete, they just extend the edge of the block enough that the seams won’t open up as the quilt is used and washed over time.

Like I said, making do when quilting half squares.

Once the binding is on, you can’t even tell which of those half squares along the edge had the binding fabric added and which did not.