Tutorial-Half Square Triangle Paper

  I'd like to share with you a tutorial on making half square triangles.  For this example you will see me cut my paper apart as I needed scrappy half squares and didn't want to make more than four at a time.  Select your triangle paper on a roll according to the FINISHED size you need for your squares.  In this instance 2" finished.  

 Select TWO fabrics and place them right sides together.

 Pin the paper in place to prevent shifting while you sew.  

 Reduce your stitch length to inch and a half or there about.

The paper is pre printed with arrows, dashes and solid lines.  The solid lines are those which you will cut on.  The dash lines are the ones you will stitch on and the arrows give you the direction in which to sew. The arrows are more important if you are sewing a long strip of these as you can zoom right through them.  I changed my pressure foot to one which has an arrow to help guide me on those dash lines.

 This is the view from the back side, before cutting the squares apart.

 You will cut on every solid line.  I took off the outside lines first.  Then cut through the center giving me two squares.  Your last cut will be on the diagonal.

 Pull off the paper being careful not to open up the seam.  Press to set seam.  Press to the dark as you open up your block.

 Check to see if your block is squared up, and trim off any access.  I did this for the first couple till I figured out that if the square measured 2 7/8" they were perfectly square and I didn't have to do this step just trim off the little seam points.

I'm not sure I would use this method again unless I had many many of the same half squares to do.  Of course we all know patterns that call for a half square triangle border and we just skip them because that seems so daunting.  This would definitely make me reconsider one of those patterns.