half-square triangle star

I learned how to make a half-square triangle star the other night. It was super easy, despite being the most frustrating sewing experience I've ever had.

Half-triangle stars are used in a lot of traditional quilts and they're really quick and easy to make. The time consuming part is that every triangle (and thus every square) must be exactly the same size so we had to do a lot of trimming and measuring. I'm realizing how much easier it is to sew when you have the right tools! The trick with the half-triangle star is that you don't do any reverse stitching, like you do when you normally sew. You just feed the fabric through your sewing machine and when it comes out the other side, you're done. Easy. Or easy except when the machines you are using knot up at the beginning of every stitch and/or break the bobbin thread and no one in the shop knows how to re-thread the bobbins or how to troubleshoot. It was seriously very frustrating so I was kind of relieved when time was up and I went home with a stack of fabric like this:
It look literally three minutes to finish sewing the pieces together and come up with this:
I love the pattern but I don't love the fabric I chose. I used a fat quarter (the hideous green of the star) I don't particularly like. I figured if I was just learning the technique then I didn't need to use the best stuff from my fabric stash. I am sure the outer border looks familiar seeing as I've used it in nearly every project I've worked on in the past year. The pattern we used makes two of these squares so maybe I'll make a pillow when I'm done with the second one?