Or: Pink Lemonade Chevrons

This summer I visited some dear friends in Chicago with my brother on our way to Michigan. We went to the Botanic Garden with them and ate deep-dish pizza at a picnic table with them and their little girl. Josef and I visited them in the hospital the afternoon they had her, and it was amazing to see her so grown up and to see them nurture and parent her. We were excited to see that they were expecting their second child. That night my friend told me the quilt I made for them was one of her favorites. It was folded on the toddler-sized bed, and looked well loved. This blanket was maybe the third or fourth baby blanket I made, and while I’m proud of it, it was a basic design but with great fabrics. It’s amazing to see something you’ve created being used and cherished by little hands.

When they announced they had another baby girl a few months later, I was excited to create another quilt for them. This family has blessed me in so many ways with friendship and kindness, and I wanted to give back to them. Though we live over seven hours apart, I still consider them to be important people in my life.

The quilt I made for their first daughter was grey, yellow, and purple. The grey and yellow are their colors and I added the purple. For this quilt I decided to add pink and try a new design—chevrons!

The first design I drew up involved small triangles—but it was going to take me forever to make, so I decided to go with big and bold chevrons. I wanted to use several different patterns for the yellow, grey, and pink with a solid white chevron.

What you need for this pattern:

6 squares of color A (yellow)
6 squares of color B (grey)
4 squares of color C (pink)
4 squares of color D (white)
1 ½ yards of backing material
Baby Quilt size packaged batting

Obviously, you can change the colors to whatever you like. I made each square a different color (that meant it would occur twice in the quilt) and I also decided that this project was a good opportunity for me to bust into my fat quarter stash. Have I mentioned that I have a problem when it comes to the precut fabrics? I do. I had a lot of greys already, and quite a few yellows. All I needed to do was get a couple more yellow and the pink. For the backing I chose to go with a material that focused on the grey and yellow since those are their colors. I really only wanted the pink to be an accent.

Cut the fabric for the front of quilt into 10-in squares.

Pair them up as outlined on the pattern and draw a diagonal line from corner to corner.

Sew on either side of the centerline—just like I did for the first Triangle Practice post. It’s the same technique. I’m going to be a pro at this.

sew down either side of the center line.jpg

Cut down the centerline.

Iron them out so you have your square blocks.

You’ll get the chevrons when you arrange the blocks. I did this one row at a time.

Sew the rows together.

Before you know it, you have a quilt top!

I used basting spray to get the quilt top to attach to the batting.

I trimmed away the extra batting and then used basting spray to attach the backing. For the binding I wanted to use the same method of wrapping the backing around to the front of the quilt, so needed there to not be a bunch of extra batting hanging around.

Then comes the quilting! Baby quilts are small enough that I can use my sewing machine to do the quilting, which is fun because then I can use the fun stitches that I never use otherwise. I chose to follow the seams of the chevrons with yellow thread on one side and pink on the other.

After I finished the quilting with the yellow thread I still had a lot of yellow thread on my bobbin, and no free bobbin. So I chose to do the binding before I did the pink. Now. This is not typically recommended, but I already had the hard part of the quilting done so wasn’t too worried about it.

I used my rotary cutter and acrylic ruler to trim down the backing material. Normally I only leave an inch on the backing to wrap around. But for this quilt I chose to leave 1½ inches of the backing on each side so more of it would be visible on the front.