Chevron Quilt Finish

Last Saturday was a beautiful day here.  I'm getting in the mood for spring cleaning, and washing some of the quilts we use most often.

I spent some of the weekend making this Chevron quilt top, inspired by a pattern from the Moda Bakeshop called Scrumptious Scrappy Chevron Picnic Quilt, made by Rhonda of Patchwork Sampler.
(Click here for the free pattern link).
I changed the pattern, of course, because somehow I never can quite make myself follow all of any quilt's directions.  I made the quilt baby-sized, and instead of squares pieced from rectangles between the chevron rows I just added strips.

The blocks are made from 4 half square triangles of prints with white.  There are 16 blocks in my quilt.  Below you can see the very basic quilting.

When I got the top finished, I laid out a queen sized Warm and Natural batt, and laid the backing for this quilt, plus 3 other small quilts, on it.    (The blue fabric on the left is on the back of the Chevron quilt.  The print is a one-way design of Winnie the Pooh, writing about friendship.)
I then cut them out.  This didn't waste much batting at all--there was only a short strip left over to go in the scrap batting bag.

On Monday, I made the binding from the same fabric as the borders, and sewed it together on my trusty Singer.

On Tuesday, I finished the quilting and added the binding by machine.  For quilting and binding I used my Pfaff electric.  I once used a Davis VF for that job, but I had some serious tension issues and finally had to give it up.

So here's my finish for the week, a Chevron quilt made from fabrics we used for tablecloths at the baby shower.  There are lots of animal prints here, which I hope will be cheerful for a baby and the baby's family.

There are lots of uses for clothespins besides hanging out the wash!  Instead of a fancy book holder, I use clothespins to hold cookbook pages open when I'm cooking or baking.  Here I'm making granola from one of my favorite cookbooks:

The Homemade Pantry, by Alana Chernila.  You can find her blog at Eating From the Ground Up.

Use what you've got, I always say.  And, if you can, make it yourself!

Have a lovely week, whatever you do.