Have you ever made a quilt full of half square triangles (HSTs), looked at your pretty pile of confetti trimmings, and thought, “These are too pretty to throw out!” Here’s a simple way to use them in a festive / decorative way.

I used 1.7″ (45 mm) glass ornaments that have an iridescent finish. I had grand plans to frost half the ornament with etching cream, but when it came to testing the idea, it didn’t work. I think the etching cream didn’t like the iridescent finish on the glass and the frosting didn’t take. Here is the mediocre attempt:

Anyway, I abandoned it and just stuffed it into a plain ornament. It made for a very simple project. So simple that I could not bring myself to call this a tutorial. Step 1 is the hardest.

Tiny Scraps Ornament

1. Make an HST quilt.
2. Save the confetti or “dog-ears.”
3. Acquire some clear glass ornaments with removeable tops. I found mine at Michael’s.
4. Stuff your confetti inside.
5. Replace cap.
6. Add a hanging ribbon.

I think I’m going to preserve all my confetti this way and keep them up as year-round decorations. And some sort of weird way of tracking my progress.

The Real Story: A christmas Mini Quilt

Jacques is a stuffed monkey. He came home from school with my 6-year-old earlier this week. He’s like the classroom pet, I think? Each kid gets him for week and is supposed to take a picture with him doing something fun, then bring the photo and Jacques back for show and tell.

I was going to make a Christmas mini quilt with some leftover Cotton + Steel holiday fabrics from seasons past anyway, so I offered to make Jacques a quilt. I don’t often make things for my children these days as time is a big limitation, so I welcomed the opportunity to make a kid-centric project. The HSTs were 1-1/4″ square unfinished. However, I didn’t square them up so this was an approximation all the way through that resulted in a bit of wonkiness.

I used Suzy Quilts’ tutorial on chain piecing rows to assemble the quilt and loved how sculptural the process was. How beautiful is the process photo below! Even better than the final result, in my opinion.

I had a few HSTs left for a Sawtooth Star for the back and I used up all my Christmas fabric scraps to fill out the quilt both front and back. For the first time, I did a single-fold binding to reduce the stiffness on the edge of the quilt of this size.

I am happy to report there is no more Christmas fabric left in my stash! I really enjoyed this purely-for-fun project and blazed through it without regard for precision. That was the best part. It really didn’t matter. Jacques is going to love it and I think my son will, too.