On Chevron Quilts

Today I was thinking about quilts. I have a shopping bag full of fabric remnants I got for free all in dark blues that I would love to piece together. I've made three quilts in my life, and only one of those from start to finish.  The first was for my brother, a quillow. a lap quilt that gets folded into a pocket and turns into a pillow, that my mother and I pieced using simple rectangles and then I quilted using straight lines on our home sewing machine. The second was a hand pieced quilt my sister in law made with her mother that had sat unfinished for a long time. I took it home with me and finished the hand stitch in the ditch quilting, repaired some seams that were coming apart and then bound the quilt. The third is a quilt I made for that same sister in law, this time when I was a guest at their home. I used mostly kanga fabrics that had been brought from Tanzania and Zimbabwe, centering the patterns the best I could so that the large designs would show up nicely and I added quite a bit of  purchased fabrics to fill out the pattern and make it a queen size bed spread which I then wrangled under the borrowed sewing machine and quilted using a walking foot. It was a great experiment which you can see below, folded in half.

Now I'm thinking about the new quilt. It will probably be a pieced duvet cover, since we do have our feather duvets we enjoy using in the winter, and this way we'll be able to use it on its own in the summer as a very light quilt, or in the winter with the feathery insides.

 I feel that now that it seems that the rage for chevrons is cooling off, I can give in to them knowing that it is not just fashion fever talking, but that I actually like the look.  Sometimes I have a hard time telling if I like some things because I see them everywhere and it seems everyone else likes them, or if I honestly like them. Like the ombre trend. But I digress. (although maybe next quilt will be a hand-dyed cotton ombre quilt.. hmmmm)

So there are apparently a few ways to make Chevrons.

One is using stripes, cutting them into squares and piecing them to make the zigzags like the next example from crazy mom quilts that I found on the bee square blog.

 the other is using larger quarter square triangles in strips and  offsetting them.
like the next example from Rebecca on the Threadbias blog.

 a third is using triangles into squares and piecing the points, like Sew Caroline explains on her blog, which she used for a smaller project, a bag. An ombre chevron bag. Be still my beating heart, not yet, not yet.

I haven't made up my mind which I'll use yet, perhaps I'll do more research, or attempt a "trial run".I can see the advantage of the strips into squares and then into chevrons, but because the fabrics I have tend to run in bigger prints, I think it would be better to have larger squares instead of such teeny tiny ones, so that the pattern shows better.

I would like to fool-proof the piecing, since I'm not that great at sewing at the intended seam allowances, a fact I learned while making my last quilt, where my calculations were completely wrong and the quilt turned out a lot smaller than I intended, and I had to improvise with a wider border. In the end it turned out well, but I'd like to improve with each quilt... I hope accurate measurements is not too much to ask.  One of my other goals is to try and limit myself to using the fabrics I already have, so I am OK with the pattern looking somewhat different, but if I run short of fabric, I'm still open to getting needed fabric from the creative reuse center where I volunteer, Scrap DC.

And as for quilting, I'll either do a simple stitch in the ditch on my home machine, or this lovely colorful running stitch. Because I won't be quilting through many layers, just the top and lining, I think it won't be too hard to get even stitches... and I do have lots of blue embroidery floss!

While searching for the quilt pattern, I stumbled on the beautiful Gees Bend quilts. I spent a bit of time reading about them and looking at the designs, at how they were just sewn going with the flow, with what the fabric dictated, and then ended up looking really lovely. From what the quilters explain, it is all quite effortless for them.  I hope I can someday develop that flair with color and value balance, until then, I'll just continue to enjoy looking at the quilts and thinking that no matter what my quilt ends up looking like, if it's done with love and care, it'll be perfect for us. 

From the Smithsonian's site:  "It was Annie Mae Young's 1976 work-clothes quilt that caught collector William Arnett's eye and led to the Gee's Bend exhibitions."