Snow... and Half Square Triangles

Friday about noon, Louie left for Atlantic Iowa, where he goes every year at this time for a big pool tourament, and every year, it snows. It just has to. The pool tournament couldn't go on without Maquoketa getting dumped on. Now granted, it did wait until late Friday evening to start, but there have been years when it was snowing REALLY bad before he even left, and he drove in it, despite his wife crying and begging him not to go, and how she doesn't want to be widowed at such a young age. It takes about 5 hours to get there from here, and he has made plenty of phone calls letting his wife know of his progress. The weather does not scare those boys, but it sure makes me get older quicker!It snowed until about 9:00 Saturday moring, then it quit. The wind was supposed to pick up, but I don't think it blew as much as what the weatherman said. There was, however, about 5 inches of snow on my driveway. No big deal. I have THIS, right? Well, if only it would have started............
Ok, plan B. I haven't shoveled snow in probably 15 years! Thank goodness it wasn't all watery and heavy. However, while I was shoveling and having a pity party all by myself, I thought of a few 'young' fellows who recently have passed away shortly after returning to the house after shoveling, and I wondered how long it would take for someone to find 'the body', as Louie was not scheduled to return until Sunday afternoon sometime.
45 minutes later..... I thought I did a pretty good job, and I didn't die, but I thought I was going to. I wasn't cold though. I was too 'hot' to be cold (if you know what I mean). I was not a happy camper. I'm sure the snow blower wouldn't start due to 'operator error', but I HAVE started it many times in the past, so I really don't know why it wouldn't start other than maybe my 'pulling arm' isn't as strong as it used to be. I know my lungs sure aren't in very good shape as I 'wheezed' for quite awhile afterwards.

On a brighter, and 'quilty note', most of Saturday I did spend ironing, cutting, and sewing. Last week on the Janome 6500 yahoo group, someone told about making 8 half square triangles in one shot, and I waited all week for the weekend to try it. I love this method, and I made up quite a few hst. I picked several fat quarters out of my stash, picking light colored fat quarters, and then fat quarters that were either yellow or green, or a combination of both. I folded my fat quarters in half lengthwise so the width of my fabric was 18". Just to make it all easy for cutting and less fabric waste, I chose to cut 9" squares. I got four 9" squares out of each fat quarter, so cutting a light and green fat quarter together, gave me four 'sandwiches' for making the half square triangles. I drew lines diagonally from the corners, then horizontally and vertically in the middle.I sewed a 1/4" seam on each side of the middle diagonal lines.......... Then I cut on all the pencil lines. I ended up with EIGHT half square triangles. I decided to press the seams open for this project to see just how I liked that method. I have read quite a bit of discussion lately on the pros and cons and decided to see for myself how I like it. Each HST ended up measuring 4 inches, so they all turned out very accurate and consistent.
Tada! These eight hst are only from ONE 9" pair of light and dark. I still have three more squares of each color combination so figuring 8 hst from one, you would get 32 hst from one pair of fat quarters, with left over fabric for your stash! Woo hoo! Here are just a few more sets I sewed. I only sewed one 9" 'sandwich' from each set of fat quarters I used, so I still have three more of each color set to sew. I took this photo early on, and I think I have about 14 sets sewn right now. I plan on going to about 20 before I stop.
For more details on how to figure what size to cut your squares for your desired size, check out this website.