Originally Posted by Rhonda

I used to sell my gift items to a local gift shop. Over the 12 yrs I sold to her I made alot of pieced items. I am always on the lookout for anything that saves time and effort.

While watching some of the Quilt shows on TV I developed my own shortcuts.

I call it the Cut Down Method.

You cut fabric swatches and sew them together and then using a template you cut out the center into a unit I call a "Block". when I was cutting out HSTs(half square triangles) I would sew strips together and then open the strips and lay the template on there and cut out the HSTs. This was my first shortcut.

Then I thought what if we use 3 fabrics. So I experimented with 3 and this is what it looks like.