Half-Square Triangles with Blacks, Whites, Strawberries, Daisies and Baskets!

   Fabrics with berries have always been a favorite of mine, and I couldn't resist the black and white fabrics with the bright red strawberries. I held on to them for a while, not sure what to do with them, but enjoying them immensely just the same.
    One day, I saw a dynamic quilt in a magazine made out of half-square triangles, and thought I'd try it with this fabric. I pulled fabrics from my stash to go with the prints, and committed to a dark/light color scheme with black, white, red, green and yellow. Some browns were allowed in as part of the yellow family. No blues or purples thought! Here's the quilt...or part of it. The portion to the right represents about a quarter of the blocks that I have.
   To start, the fabric was cut into 4 1/2" squares, a diagonal line was drawn on the backs of the lighter squares, and two lines were stitched on each square: each 1/4" from the line that was drawn.
   The squares were then cut on the drawn line, and pressed open towards the dark fabric. You will be surprised at how quickly the squares add up! Each individual square was jointed to another, and to sets of those were sewn to each other to create a four-patch block about 8 1/2" unfinished. The important thing to remember is that the darker triangles all need to be placed in the same orientation. Of course, once the "quadrants" or quarter pieces of the quilt are assembled, you are free to arrange them in any way you want...perhaps in this manner, courtesy of a word processing program.

 

   Here's a close-up of one of the 4-patch blocks waiting to be sewn to others. The finished quilt should be about 64" square without borders, just a binding. What do you think? Do you love half-square triangle quilts as much as I do? There are so many ideas for them!

   A similar fabric to my black strawberry print would be Annie's Farm Stand Black Strawberry Toss (search for black strawberry toss), available at The Fat Quarter Shop as of this posting.