Trimming HRTs
Now that you’ve made all your HRTs, how the heck do you trim those things?
Do not, I repeat, do NOT trim them like half-square triangles. It doesn’t work that way!
The big difference between trimming HRTs and HSTs is that, when you trim HSTs, the diagonal seam runs corner to corner; everything’s nice and square and symmetrical. Not so, evil cousins of HSTs. Yes, I mean you, HRTs. You’re the evil cousins. Why R you the way you R?
(I write these blog posts in the time I get all to myself, with no one here to stop me or put the brakes on my weird sense of humor. This isn’t an apology. I just thought you should know.)
So anyway, because HRTs are fundamentally different, they have their own sense of style. And that means there’s a special way to trim them. Basically, you’ll want to line up that diagonal seam a square quarter-inch away from the edges of the trimming size.
Whuuuuut. Okay, let me back that statement up with a graphic:
Here’s what’s going on in the graphic: the dashed line is the trim line — this is where you’re going to cut with your rotary cutter. Hence the scissors. The greyed out area is the quarter-inch seam allowance. Inside the greyed out seam allowance, that’s the shape of your finished block, the size it’ll be once it’s sewn into your quilt top. The point is, when you look at this illustration, you can see how the diagonal seam intersects the HRT finished size corners, but not the trimmed size corners. It’s slightly offset from the corners when you trim it.
Here’s one more graphic, this one from my Electri-Sky Quilt pattern, hopefully helpful, showing exactly how to line up your ruler to trim these little guys, whether they’re Right or Left HRTs:
And if it still doesn’t make sense, here’s a video I posted to IG a while back demonstrating how to trim HRTs. I used Sharpie to show the finished size of the HRT, the trimmed size, and the diagonal, but you could get away with fewer markings if you wanted to. Oh, and there are also specialty rulers for trimming HRTs. I use the Creative Grids HRT ruler. Nope, I don’t have an affiliate link for you, sorry, but if I ever do become important enough to have things like affiliate links, I’ll come back on here and add it in.
