Autumn Chevrons

I started this quilt a few months ago (in autumn, actually!), before the holiday rush. I began by pulling some autumn-colored fabrics from my oft-neglected fat quarter stash. I knew that I wanted to make a chevron quilt, so I cut strips in various widths and started to piece them together. I was staggering the ends of my strips (like this) so that I could trim up the edges later, but I soon realized that I wasn't staying consistent in my staggering. I was aiming for 45-degree angles on my strips, but soon decided to cut the pieced strips at (somewhat) random angles.

After I had a few strips pieced and the edges squared up, I played with layout options. I didn't intend to use a sashing between the strips, but the variation of color, print, strip width and angle resulted in a horrible eyesore when all of the pieced strips were butting up against each other. Still unwilling to admit defeat to this quilt idea, I auditioned some solids for sashing. My first instinct was to use kona snow, but it read as a fairly bright white against the darker prints. I initially pulled out the khaki simply because I had enough yardage on hand, not expecting to use it. Boy was I surprised when that ended up being my favorite!

To quilt this piece, I followed the angles of the pieced slices in the strips and formed a horizontal zig zag pattern across the quilt. The quilted lines are spaced (somewhat) randomly apart, but I did make sure that every slice within the strips had a quilting line running through it. Why? Because I'm a tiny bit obsessive compulsive like that.

I couldn't imagine binding this quilt in anything but the khaki solid. I wanted the piecing to really stand out, and I think that any other binding would have distracted from the piecing just a bit.

For the back I used a DS Quilts print from JoAnn's. The colors worked really well with the fabrics on the front.

I'm toying with the idea of re-opening an Etsy shop this fall when Addy is in school all day and and I have a bit more free time. My intent was to save this quilt for the shop, but while I was sewing the binding down I found a flaw in the material on one of the borders. So lucky me, I get to keep this one! We don't have a lot of space in our house, so Autumn Chevrons is currently hanging in the stairway leading to our basement. It's just the touch of homemade that my stairway was lacking!