Eight Reasons You Should Use a Specialty HST Ruler

First things first. The Road to Oklahoma free pattern is now in the Free Resource Library. This is a great pattern for scraps, fat quarters, or jelly roll strips. Once I get some decent photographs of my Road to Oklahoma quilts, I will make an “offical” post about the pattern, but first I want to let you know a key item you will need to make it: a specialty half-square triangle ruler. The pattern is specifically written to use one of these rulers.

What is a Half-Square Triangle Ruler?

In a nutshell, a half-square triangle ruler allows you to cut triangles adding only the half-inch seam allowances to the finished size. That means if you want 2″ finished triangles, you will cut them from 2½” strips. These rulers work by eliminating the ⅜” dog ear from one end of the triangle.

What Rulers Will Work?

The most common of these rulers is probably the Easy Angle.

It is readily available at quilt shops, big box stores, and Amazon. The Easy Angle comeis in 4½”, 6½”, and 10½” sizes. I recommend the 6½” because it covers the most common sizes of half-square triangles.

Other brands that work the same way include the Omnigrid 96 (and larger 96L) and the Creative Grids 45 Degree Half-Square Triangle Ruler.

 

Two of my favorite rulers combine the ability to cut both half and quarter-square triangles from strips. These are Bonnie K Hunter’s Essential Triangle Tool and Fons and Porter’s (Dritz/Omnigrid) Half-and-Quarter-Square Triangle Ruler (formerly called Flying Geese Ruler). Unfortunately, I think the Fons and Porter ruler has been discontinued and therefore may be hard to find. Because of their versatility, I recommend one of these rulers if you don’t already own a half-square triangle ruler.

Eight Reasons to Use a Half-Square Triangle Ruler

1. No cutting odd ⅞” measurments. If you need 2″ finished squares, simply cut 2½” strips.
2. The ability to cut both squares and HSTs from the same strip of fabric. One strip–two different units!
3. If you layer the two triangle fabrics right sides together before cutting, they will be ready to feed through the sewing machine. As a habit, if I am using a print fabric with a background fabric, I always cut with the print fabric right side up and the background fabric right side down. That consistency saves time and thinking!
4. Because one tip has been cut off there is less chance of the fabric being pushed into the needle hole when sewing the triangles.
5. It is easy to chain piece, stack press, then trim the one dog ear.
6. There is no bias on the outside edges.
7. In my timed test, this was the fastest way to make HSTs.
8. MOST IMPORTANTLY: the triangles will be accurate without trimming slivers from the edges. This means no waste. One of my tenets for quilting is life is way too short to spend time trimming slivers!!

Of course there are many ways to construct half-square triangles. A tutorial for several methods can be found here. In my timed tests of these methods, using a specialty ruler was the fastest way to construct HSTs. I really hope you will give this method a try. You may just find YOUR new favorite way to make triangles!