I’m making a scrappy quilt from vintage fabrics plus a few newer prints in my stash. It’s based on an antique quilt I saw during Show & Tell at my guild recently.
It’s made of simple stitch-and-flip units like the one above. They’re also called easy corner triangles.
Ordinarily, you sew from corner to corner on the small squares, trim to leave 1/4″ seam allowance and discard the small triangles.
But there’s a little magic trick you can do which will give you bonus triangle-squares. The first person I knew to do this was Bonnie Hunter over at quiltville.com. It’s rather ingenious.
Instead of marking just one line, you mark a second line 1/2″ away from the first one.
I made them darker so you could see them. In reality I would mark a very light line.
Sew on both of the lines.
When you cut between the two lines of stitching, the part you would have thrown away becomes a little triangle-square unit.
Voilá. Three for the price of one! Some quilters don’t mark either line but I get better results when I mark. It’s okay either way.
When you’re making a scrap quilt, these little guys add up in a hurry! I already have dozens. They are 1-3/4″ now so they’ll finish at 1-1/4″. It’s an odd size but it doesn’t really matter. And sometimes an oddly-sized patch makes a quilt more interesting.
What will I do with the bonus units? Here are a handful of ideas. Above, sew four matching units together into a block.
Or sew two non-matching but similar units together like this for a Broken Dishes block.
Here’s another idea: Put the darker halves all toward the center.
I like the idea of a bigger block using two fabrics in each row and keeping them in the same position all the time.
Lately I’m enthused about rectangular blocks. This could be really fun.
I could rearrange them into these shapes instead. I’ve only begun to play and already the possibilities are enticing.
Do you make bonus units like this when you Stitch-and-Flip? How have you used them?
I made these units on the HQ Stitch 710.
Lovely little bonus quilt ideas! I cringe when I see a video where the maker cuts and tosses these triangles…I feel so good to do this same sew, cut and save technique and have so little wasted fabrics. How many times have I seen someone snowball a corner and throw it out? This is a super idea.
The first person I knew to do this was Bonnie Hunter. I’ll be ever grateful for her creative thinking!