TropicalSoup

Easy Half Square Triangles en masse {a tutorial}

I've had a hankering to make a HST (half square trieangle) quilt for a while now...partly because there are so many gorgeous quilts around that inspire me, and partly because I think it's a good thing to remind myself of the importance of accurate piecing every now and again, and HSTs keep you honest!

The other night, I grabbed 2 charm packs, and started cutting. And it occurred to me that someone might appreciate if I shared the method I use to make HSTs en masse. I first saw this method at a quilt retreat in Wellington, NZ (way back at the turn of the century, haha) and though I've racked my brain I can't be sure who it was that showed me. I just know I was amazed then, and am still pretty tickled - it's a shortcut that seems somehow like a magic trick. But with fabric!

Using 5" charm squares, 2 charm squares will yield 4 3" HST blocks (or 3 1/4" if you're very careful). I used 2 charm packs (Sandy Gervais' Giddy) and now have a grand total of 168 blocks. So, lets get started:

Step 1: take 2 fabric squares, right sides together. (I've offset them here so you can see them, though of course, you'll want to line the edges up)

Step 2: sew around all 4 sides of the fabric - I have marked the stitching lines in fabric pen here just to make it more obvious: you just start at one corner, and stitch 1/4" away from the edge all the way around, pivoting the fabric at each corner with your needle down.This creates a fabric parcel, that is sealed on all sides.

At this point I like to add a little spray starch and press the sewn fabric parcels well - the addition of starch now makes for much easier cutting and sizing up later!

Step 3: Take a fabric parcel, and line your ruler up with the diagonal corners. (It's helpful here to also line up your stitching line or the edge of the fabric with some of the markers on the ruler) Cut the fabric right through, corner to corner.

Step 4: Now line the ruler up corner to corner on the opposing diagonal (sometimes moving yourself or rotating the block make this easier. 20 cuts in I remembered I had a rotating cutting mat. Duh!) Cut through.

Step 5: ta da! You're done - all you need to do now is press them open, and trim them up if need be. Voila!!! How easy is that?!?

 

Confession: I spent 2 hours last night trimming these little blocks and I got through just over half. Trimming is one of my least fabourite things - but necessary here. It drives me a little batty. And Law and Order may or may not have required more of my attention during this period!

 

Extending the life of baby hangers

 

Catchy title, non?

 

 

I have these gorgeous wooden baby hangers that I acquired way back before Atticus was born and that have been used for BahaCoca prop shoots as well as holding up Cole and Immy's clothing for the last 5-and-then-some years. Recently I've started noticing that with the kids (and their clothes) getting bigger, the hangers aren't quite so useful as the clothes slip off (wider necklines for dresses and jackets and things means a tougher job to *balance* them on the hanger! Add to that the smallish child's approach to removing clothing from said hangers (I believe yank and fling is the technical term) and these hangers spend an awful lot of time empty, with their intended inhabitants crumpled below them.

 

Anyway, that small novella is all to say that I figured out a way to extend the life of these sweet wee hangers somewhat, thanks to a couple of pegs and my handy dandy glue gun. Hot gluing a peg to either *shoulder* of the hanger turns them into pants/skirt hangers that fit just perfectly for these kindergarten sized clothes. And they are ideal for Cole and Immy's school uniform bottoms, even negating the need for ironing {yay!} (you would have been treated to a mass array of maroon shorts and skorts in the pics, but it was the weekend and they were all in the wash, ha!)

This is seriously simple. I contemplated doing a tutorial but resisted since blowing your nose is probably trickier than this little project! Of course, you can get a little silly aesthetically-oriented like me, and modpodge a little scrapbook paper onto the pegs, or paint them (I just did the face of the pegs since I'm a rebel like that. Nail polish rides again!) You could also do this for any plastic baby hangers, and use plastic pegs - there are some really cute ones around! And oh boy, it's so nice to see clothing actually still attached to the hanger when I open their wardrobe!

The Motherlode necklace hanger - a tutorial

A little while ago I saw this idea on Pinterest, and promptly pinned it to one of my boards – my collection of costume necklaces has been living in a large wooden bowl and it’s a less than ideal solution – lots of tangling and forgetting what’s buried underneath. I’d been toying with the idea of finding a way to hang my necklaces, and this really appealed, but it still wasn’t quite right – I have a lot of chunky, weighty pieces, and I worried that a canvas wouldn’t be able to support that weight.  Also, I’d need to make several of these covered canvases to house all the bling, and that seemed like it would end up looking very busy.

And then I bought wood earlier for a completely separate project (next week!) and the light bulb flashed. I finally got a chance to sit down and make my version of the necklace hanger – and I am so pleased with the result! I love that this system prevents those hideous tangles, I can see all my necklaces (and one random bracelet – Cole and Immy insisted on hanging them all for me and an empty hook just isn’t the done thing..and I've since found several more that were hanging out in other random spots around the house) and the display does wonders to brighten up a previously bland beige space. (I’m being super slow in getting things up on the wall here) It’s also really hard to beat a project that costs less than $6, and that’s with buying wood and cuphooks, things that lots of us already have waiting in the garage!

5 days later and I still can’t help but smile every time I see all that pretty!

I took some photos along the way in case you are keen to make one of your own (or just want to laugh and point at the fact that I painted hardware with nail polish, ha!)

What you’ll need:

~a piece of lumber (mine is 4.2cm x 1.9cm x 90cm – approx. 1”x2” x 1 yard long clear pine. It cost me the grand total of 85c from Bunning’s. Use any scraps you have in the garage etc – as long as it fits where you want it to go, and is long enough for your bling, it’s the perfect size! and really, if you have something old and gnarled and characterful, you may not even want to cover it!)

~some batting (preferably the length of your wood and wide enough to wrap around 75% of the circumference. Honestly though, this would also be an ideal job for those pesky little pieces since you’ll just be stapling them on)

~some fabric (similar dimensions as the batting, but slightly longer in length for wrapping the ends)

~cup hooks (my pack of 25 was $5 at Bunning’s, and I used 24 of them)

~Command 3M picture hanging strips (or hanging method of your choice)

Tools:

Staple gun and staples, glue gun (optional depending on hanging method used), hammer and small nail, nail polish.

Make it happen:

1. Decide how nutty you want to get…this is the time to paint those cup hooks and a few staples if you’re that way inclined. (and a note from the *been there done that* camp:  if  you’re using super-cheap nail polish that you bought for $2 on an end cap clearance, then do the job outside, or this is where you pass out from the diabolical fumes!)

2. Wrap the batting around your wood (snigger), lining the an end up with the edge as in the picture – I deliberately cut my batting so that it wouldn’t go all the way around the circumference of the wood, as I didn’t want to fight with getting cuphooks through all that bulk. Similarly, my batting is only as long as the wood so that I don’t need to wrestle it into neat folds – that area will be covered by fabric anyway. Staple the batting in place.

The lined-up edge will be the front of your hanger, and your batting should fit over the wide front, the narrow top and end partway down the wide back (does that make sense?) The reason I didn’t line the whole back with batting (or fabric) is so that I could attach 3m strips for attaching the hanger to the wall, and those strips don’t cling particularly well to fabric.

3. I painted the underside of the thin edge of wood with nail varnish at this point (I blame the fumes I mainlined in step 1 for this particular little trip down insanity aisle!) since I wasn’t sure if you’d be able to see that bit of wood once everything was done, and I thought the raw wood might be a bit obvious – again, I resisted putting fabric there so I didn’t have to  jam the cup hooks through anything except wood, the fabric and risk tears and pulls (never mind making life more difficult!)

4. Now all you need to do is add the fabric – line up one long edge with the batting that finished partway down the wide back side, and staple securely, making sure you leave enough fabric on each end to fold and cover the edges. Wrap the fabric around the wood, following the batting, then all I did was fold under the excess fabric so that the fabric extended slightly beyond the bottom front edge, and stapled it to the narrow bottom, leaving some (painted) wood exposed. It’s a really good idea to staple from the centre out to keep the fabric smooth and prevent you ending up with a bubble of excess in the middle!

5. Fold the ends of the fabric on each side over to the back, stapling as you go to keep the folds and corners crisp.

6. Screw in your cuphooks. I eyeballed the distance between cuphooks, and just poked the tip in at each point so there'd be an indentation as a marker. Then I tapped a small nail about 1/4" into the wood at each marker - it  makes screwing the cup hooks in by hand so much easier if you have a little hole started in the wood for the screw to grip.

 

7. Attach whatever hanging mechanism you choose – as I mentioned before, I used 3m Velcro picture hanging strips, and simply hot glued them to the wood for extra security.

8. Mount on your wall of choice, stand back and admire your handiwork!

Good grief – is there an award somewhere for making an incredibly quick and easy project seem insurmountable and intensive? Sheesh. If you've managed to get all the way through that, well done! And if you happen to make one for yourself, I'd really love to see your version - please post a pic on Tropical Soup's Flickr group!

 

I'm linking up with: Creative Me, Skip to my Lou, Tip Junkie, Just Something I Whipped Up, and M.M.M.

 

Nail polish....no, really!

(cup hooks drying between coats. Taping them to a table edge with masking tapes lets them dry without the paint/polish coming into contact with other surfaces and rubbing off.)

Did you know you can use nail polish (varnish) as a paint alternative or a finishing tool? Obviously it’s not a great plan if you want to refinish a wall or something of similar magnitude (how many bottles of polish would it take to paint a door I wonder?) but for little jobs it is brilliant - like colour matching your staples so they are less obtrusive for a home decor project (I know. I don't get out much)

There’s no messy clean-up of brushes etc, the very nature of it means that the varnish seals beautifully, dries fast and is durable, it adheres fantastically to metal, and since you can get them so cheaply in such a myriad of colours there’s never a problem with getting the right one for the task at hand…even if your beloved Essie/Opi is the perfect shade, I bet you could find a $2 version to match! And a couple of coats has the lovely glossy smooth finish of a good spray job!

I confess that this polish/varnish discovery came about as a result of my need to paint something small as part of a home dec project (I'll be sharing it tomorrow) coupled with my aversion to dragging out the paints and trying to mix something the right shade, and all the associated clean up and blah blah blah; sometimes laziness does pay off!

Plus, turns out you can even use the polish on your nails...and who can say that about test pots?!?

 

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Spreading the word at: Fun to Craft, A Crafty Soiree, Creative Me and Our Creative Spaces.

 

A friendly reminder to finish your half quilted quilts!

See this? This is what happens when you leave safety pins in a half-quilted quilt for nearly 7 years! There was obviously a pin or 2 in my stash at the time that weren't stainless steel, bugger. Thankfully I'm okay with 6 tiny rust marks (yep, 3 pins. Grr. They were immediately consigned to purgatory aka the bin!) on this particular quilt - it *works* okay with the colouring and style...but still, it's something I'd really like to avoid from here on out!

A sneaky easy piecing trick...explained by way of novella

You know how sometimes you have a lightbulb moment, and wonder how you never thought of it before? (Or if everyone else already does this since it's such a practical solution, but had never mentioned it before before it was just so obvious?)

I had one of those yesterday, and thought I'd share it. You know, just in case you were in the dark like me! I'm a chain piecer when it comes to quilts, and I like to piece several pieces/blocks rows at once rather than piecing one seam, iron, then back to the design board to check placement and collect the next piece. Repeat ad infinitum...I'm just too impatient! Of course, rushing this part of the process can result in blocks joined incorrectly, out of order, upside down and what have you. In scrappy style quilts it doesn't matter quite so much, but sometimes you want a definite placement. I've tried marking the blocks with wee post-its, pinned scraps of paper on the blocks with its placement details, and made a *key* with pins attached to the block. These made identification a little easier, but there were still flaws with the plan - the paper becoming separated from the block, orientation of the block, drawing way too much blood from awkwardly placed pins...you know, the usual! ...and ohmygod this is taking an excrutiatingly large amount of words to describe something quick and easy and designed to speed up the process of chain piecing without compromising placement. Verbal diarrhoea much? Honestly Jo...imagine all the things your poor readers would have to find to fill up their time if instead my post had read:

Hey, I've just realised if you write the placement of each block in a quilt directly onto the block with dissolving fabric marker (or your kids' Crayola washable markers work a treat too) - it keeps everything in the correct order as well as the right orientation...which makes for much speedier quilt construction for those quilts when you need everything in the right order (ie non-scrappy) but still want to chain piece. No paper scraps/post-its or weird codes marked in pins cut down on the complexity, and the markings wash right out once you're finished. Ta-dah!