Following last week’s Paper Piecing Toolkit, this week I’ve been working on Half Square Triangles, so I thought I’d share with you my toolkit for them:

This is a smaller kit than last week, but the fastest way to make HSTs that I know of!

My main stitching tool is my Clearly Perfect Angles by New Leaf Stitches – I could rapturise about this for hours, but basically it’s a cling that goes on the bed of your machine so that you can sew HSTs without having to draw any lines.  The 2 sets of marking lines allow you to either sew either side of an (invisible) diagonal to be cut along, or to go directly across the diagonal like you might for flying geese.  There’s more info on my review post here.

As ever, there’s my Olfa Deluxe rotary cutter – there’s a lot of trimming with HSTs, so comfort is the way to go!  It’s even better when you remember to change the blade, which I did on Saturday.

Then there’s my Creative Grids rulers – in this case my 6 1/2″ one as I was doing 4 1/2″ HSTs.  I love my creative grids rulers for so many reasons, but in this case it’s because there’s a 45 degree line to place on the diagonal when trimming.  I know there are many that like the Blocloc rulers, but I’m afraid I never got on with mine and ended up giving it away – it only works if you press to one side, and I’m an open presser, especially with HSTs which can have lots of bulk where points meet.

And in action:

And finally there’s my Fiskars rotating cutting mat, which makes it fast to spin the HST round to trim.  I never actually use the lines on my cutting mats as I prefer to use the rulers alone (since there can be size discrepancies between the 2) but for those that like the security of a line, these are very well marked.

What about you, what are your favourite HST tools?