Half square triangle quilt

When I think of simply constructed quilts, I always think of those made just from squares and half-square triangles; the permutations are endless. When it was my month for a bee I was in last year, I asked everyone to make blocks from half-square triangles and the variety that came back was amazing. You can see it here.

And I've always thought the pinwheel block had lots of possibilities to do something fun with so that's how this next quilt came about; and I've even managed to remember to document the process if you want to have a go too.

I chose to make two difference pin wheel blocks.

This one.

And if you don't fancy eight points coming together in the centre of the block, this one.

This one is good for fussy cutting big, dramatic prints.

For the first block you need:

To make the half-square triangles I use the simple way of placing two of the 3 and 7/8" fabric squares right sides together, pencil marking a diagonal line from one corner to the other and then sewing either side.

In the picture above, two of the light grey squares get sewn to the dark grey squares using this method and the other two light grey squares are sewn with the two white squares that measure 3 and 7/8".

This image should give you a clearer idea of what your layout should look like.

The plain white squares are the ones measuring 3 1/2"

If you want a simpler and quicker route to making a pinwheel block that only uses one feature fabric then take out the four centre blocks...

...and fussy cut one big block in the same fabric.
Whichever block you decide, you'll end up with a 12 1/2" unfinished block.

I was aiming for a mixture of both.

I liked how it looked when it got to this stage but felt it still lacked something. I always try to make 'interesting on the eye' quilts. I want the eyes to dart all over, no matter how simple the initial block is. So I decided to add a bit of additional interest to some of the corners.

This bit is purely optional but I took random scrappy bits of fabric (every single one was different and had not been used in any of the blocks), cut them up into 2" squares and then added them to the corner of some of the blocks like this.

It now gives this effect:

Just the right amount of interest for me.
You could add the little triangles to each of the corners which would form a square on point.
I didn't because I thought it would be too overwhelming but more importantly you're then into the realms of trying to get all the corners evenly matched to form the perfect square. Keeping it like this means you don't have to worry about matching anything.

And that's it really.
I hope I've provided a clear explanation but if not, let me know and I'll do my best to answer any queries.

Linking up to WIP Wednesday