PART TWO: Chevron style St. Clement's quilt

It has taken a little while to get this blog up, although I had the pictures up! My diary has been full of exciting projects and ideas that I'm developing this year. 

TRIANGLE ARRANGEMENT

N.B.TAKE A PHOTO OF YOUR TRIANGLE ARRANGEMENT AS A REFERENCE POINT!

Here's a photo of my triangles all arranged - Is what I would say if I had taken such a picture! (see note)

Note: MAKE SURE YOU TAKE A PHOTO OF THE OVERALL QUILT YOU WILL BE MAKING ONCE YOU HAVE ARRANGED THE TRIANGLES!

It is really annoying if, say, you knock the pile of triangles over and can't remember the order - I can testify to this. Although, I did figure out what happened eventually it is an hour of my life I cannot get back!! So, pin a note to say which column it is and if it is top/bottom.

Having laid out all the triangles together to see how they will go together, I pinned them and made sure it was marked where I needed to sew, so that the right yellow/orange triangles were attached to the right part of the orange/yellow triangles. 

Image of most of my triangles nicely pinned in the correct order. 

MAKING SQUARES

Part 1: I pinned each set of 2 triangles together

Part 2: I sewed each set of 2 triangles together, with a double stitch at either end. This makes a square.

N.B. Yay! It's time to iron those brilliant seams!

You've made a square! - now to make rectangles... 

MAKING RECTANGLES

Having checked that the triangles are oriented as I want them I pinned the right-hand, vertical edge (which at the moment is the horizontal top edge). Turn your head left a bit - that's it! This secures my fabric for sewing. 

 

After you've sewn the 2 squares together they become a nice rectangle. 

Note: The thinner fabric (yellow, stripey polycotton) was a bit resistant to my sewing machine whereas the 100% was quite sturdy. I decided, therefore, not to doublestitch the yellow stripey+yellow stripey triangles at the ends because then I could stretch out the stitches where it bunched up a bit. In the end the horizontal sewing will reinforce it, when I sew all the rectangles together so it doesn't matter so much that I didn't double-stitch.

BEFORE YOU DO THE NEXT BIT 

Lay out all your rectangles and double-check the overall design. Are the yellows where they should be?, the orange triangles too?

Go on, iron all those seams as well. You know you want to! It'll all look so flat and perfect once you're done ironing!

SEWING DOWN THE COLUMNS 

You must now match up the vertical seam down the middle of the first top rectangle to the vertical seam of the rectangle below. 

- Pin the 2 top fabric squares together 

- When you do this, pin the 2 right sides (the side you want people to see), together.

- Check that when you flip the rectangles open (to see how great your sewing looks) you get the chevron as it looked in your arrangement - or at least as on the line as you can (check that beautiful picture of all the wonderfully arranged triangles from before!). 

n.b. You may want to tack the seam first to make sure depending on how confident you are.  

Close up of the seams all pinned up and good to go. Hello there seams!

Full view - I pinned all my squares ready to be sewn up. I also pinned
them together so that I didn't knock them all apart by accident! 

Then do the same for the next 5 seams.
If the chevron-matching is up to your standards, continue with the next 4 columns. 

If not, maybe have a little sit down, a cuppa and watch an episode of Supernatural, New Girl or Family Guy - whatever makes you feel happier or better off than the characters in it.
Then go back to your quilting when you are more chilled out and it's not 1 in the morning. (Yes, you guessed it! I sometimes melodramatise sewing)

IN THE NEXT EPISODE OF CHEVRON STYLE ST. CLEMENTS QUILT: 

Our heroine sews together the columns so that they match perfectly. She then cuts the fleece and polyester wadding to the size of the quiltwork, as well as sewing the edges! She may even quilt it depending on how much coffee she has had at that point! Wow!

Plus - I coded that text to be dark green myself ... baby steps!