Originally Posted by
ghostrider
In reality, a triangle square is the result of joining two half square triangles (hst's) and is defined as such in all of my older basic quilting books. It's a much more accurate term for what most people now refer to as HST's.
It's not a new term at all and is frequently used in class instruction and personal conversations. If most of your quilting 'connections' are visual instead of verbal, it's understandable that you may not have run across it before this. I suspect 'HST' became an acceptable, though inaccurate, substitute as a result of message boards and blogs simply because it's much faster to type than 'triangle squares'.
Yes, I have not run across that term in either conversation or classroom to my recollection. Although I have been quilting for more than twenty years so I cannot say for sure, but it never struck me before. I will have to dig into some old vintage mags and see how HST are referred to. I like calling them HST because in my mind it presents the pic of two triangles forming a square and one can only do that with two identical right angled triangles ( I think anyway ). Just as a QST - quarter square triangle means 4(quarter) triangles=square. But it is also interesting how terms have and will continue to evolve. And actually this term of triangle square could refer to any square made up of triangles....it should then be called right triangle square, which is then the completely and correctly defining term for that square, and that is what ghost rider says was the original description of it.......