Chevron Quilt Tutorial

I have been eyeing chevron (zigzag) quilts for a while now and the immanent arrival of my sisters baby gave me a great excuse to try this kind of quilt. I could also use plenty of the fabric left over from my Polaroid Quilt.
I looked for tutorials online but struggled a bit to understand them, so I thought I would add a quick bit of help for anyone who would like to make a similar zigzag quilt.

Chevron Quilt Tutorial:

To start I chose 2 contrasting fabrics, a white and a blue stripe cotton. Cut them into squares. 

Lay the fabrics on top of each other with the right sides facing each other. Then draw a pencil line from corner to corner. Trust me, you want to draw this line- I have tried eyeballing it, it it is waaaay too hard. 

Now, sew two straight seams on either side of the pencil line. I used the edge of my presser foot to guide me to keep the stitches parallel with the pencil line. I have done it in red thread to make it easier for you to see:

Cut down the pencil line to create two triangles:

Open out the triangles to form squares again. I ironed them open and I trimmed the corners to make them square. I don't think this is strictly necessary but it helped me to then start treating them as one piece.

And this is where it gets interesting. In the next two photo's I've shown you how these two triangles add together to form the pattern.

Lol! So, I only made 1 set of triangles but I used a bit of Gimp photo magic to show you how this all fits together to make the quilt:

And on to the quilt shots: (What a kind husband/clothes line!)

It was pretty overcast (yay UK!), so the colours are a bit odd but here is a close up of the quilt itself.

I used a lazy binding which is simply awesome. I folded over the backing towards the front quilt piece. (It's like wrapping a present but you fold it over from the back, making nice corners with an iron). I then top stitched the whole lot down. It saved me from the inevitable heartache of fighting with binding and is MUCH neater than I have ever achieved.

I used a deep red spotty fabric for the reverse and added my own label so the baby will know its from me in years to come.

I really like the spotty fabric as a backing because it shows off the quilting I did in the ditch of the seams: 

Thanks husband! No need to look so scary ;)

Leave a comment if you have any questions on how to make this type of quilt. It comes together far faster than expected and it feels awesome to see it take shape.

Happy Quilting!

A Frenzy of Soft Toys No.1

I have no idea why making soft toys fascinates me so. And why I apparently do not like making the same one twice. Part of the thoughts that create these little things definitely involves cartoon thoughts. This is (according to the man) how i live my life and I have to agree when I'm feeling particularly self aware. Cartoons are amazing for distilling the essence of a thing. The details are sometimes blown up to be the main aspect and sometimes details are merged. A quick look at the owls above will convince you- these have no head or legs but even small child knows it to be an owl.
I'm sure some art major student could tell me all about this but for the moment I am content to try to distill until I'm drunk on the results.
This is Sock Pup:

Two super soft socks from my local Help the Aged charity store and a teeny bit of an old work shirt. oh. and some felt for around his black button eyes. I had never heard of sock animals before Craftster but am in love. They're so easy and soft!
Bum shot!

Because this may be my favourite part!

Next is Scrap Cat:
Made for a new born (lets just be honest- her mum!) the kitty skin was first made buy randomly piecing various cotton triangles together then zig zagging over those seams. This turned out way better than I hoped although turning the feet was super difficult and the ears were not really how I pictured them.

Here you can see the face better

Excuse the white background which is crinkled! The sun poked its head out briefly and it was a mad scrabble to catch the light, find a background and source the camera before the British summer reared its rainy head once more! My motto may become "I'm a sewer not an ironner", if ironner is even a word. Which it probably isn't since its been underlined in my text editor. damn. I'm not an ironner or a speller....