Playing with HST's

Half square triangles are really a fun block to play with.  While we were on vacation, one of the kits that I sewed up was a collection of HST's that I'd cut just before leaving.


Because the blocks were 3 1/2 inches, the HST's finished at three inches or so.  It was easy to sew and store them in the camper because they fit into such small space.  

Yesterday I sewed the HST's into strips and then play with how they might go together.  I haven't decided just yet which arrangement to use, but I took photos so that I could get a good view, and I thought it might be a good idea to share my designs.

In this first picture, the printed fabrics form larger triangles while the white fabrics form a parallelogram.  

Of course, it's easy to reverse the shapes and have the negative space form the arrow points while the printed fabrics forming the parallelograms. Interestingly, the only way for the arrow shapes to turn back and forth is to create parallelograms between the lines. 

To understand what I mean, look at the white arrow shapes.  Each row of arrows is turned.

Originally I planned to use this cris-cross design.  I like the way the triangles are turned for each row.  But I'm not so sure it's still my favorite.

I figured out this design by accident.  It's the one that led me to playing with the arrow design.  Both the printed fabrics and the white fabrics are in the parallelogram shapes.  Notice the center row of arrows?  That's what started this.

This final design has arrows going in both directions, but the printed fabrics are all pointing in the same direction and the white is pointing in the opposite direction.

There are no parallelograms in the final design, but the colored arrows are all pointing right and the white arrows are pointing left. Turning either one is what creates the parallelograms in the other.

Now wasn't that fun?  I don't know about you, but I had to look up that math shape.  Who knew the name of a parallelogram? Definitely not me.