Half Rectangle Triangles

Do you remember my post on hexagons with this picture from an envelope?

I've been working on a mini quilt based on this, as requested by Venetia. It's constructed with 'half rectangle triangles'. Still not easy to see because this picture really is very small but I've marked out the rectangles here:

There's quite a clear tutorial on half rectangle triangles here, they are slightly different to half square triangles.

This is my start:

After quite a bit of maths I had the rectangles I needed.

And put them together:

They didn't look that similar to the original image once I added more contrast to the colours, all of a sudden the 'hexagons' lost a lot of their impact. I went wrong on the sides at the top - edge triangles pointing out the wrong way! And my corners aren't great, I'd decided to make it in wool because I thought the stretch in it would help to match up points, but in fact the bulkiness of the fabric made it a lot harder with so many seams meeting up together in quite a small piece of work. So all in all I wasn't too impressed with it! I probably wouldn't have finished it if Venetia hadn't wanted me to make it, but since she did I carried on and here it is finished:

Since it's quite small I thought I'd experiment with the quilting lines and did lots of random, zig zagging lines all over it.

I'm not sure I like them either! It's really not something I'm overly proud of, but it is finished and if I make something with half rectangle triangles again I know I'll do it better for trying them out on this first.

And, remember my half square triangles from vintage sheets that I started right at the beginning of the holidays?

I'm hoping I might be able to show you that finished very soon, and although it's by no means perfect, I do like it a lot more than the half rectangles today. So watch this space!

But before that I'll be back with a photo tomorrow, Sally.