Chevron Wedding Quilt

One of the hardest parts of quilting is keeping it a secret from the person receiving the quilt… and keeping it a secret from my blog. I’m always itching to post a tiny sneak preview because 50 hours of my life has been spent tucked away in my little sewing studio, but everybody I make quilts for reads my blog… and so instead poor Mr. Right is constantly bombarded with me running into his study and like a proud kid squealing, “Look at this! Isn’t it cool?!” every time I make any sort of progress on my project.
I married such a sweet, patient man, who has added quilting to the list of things he gets excited about, along with hospital advertising and the Texas Rangers.
So I’m bursting with excitement to show you my latest finished product – my chevron wedding quilt!

This quilt was made for my dear friend Katie, who is marrying her own Mr. Right in August, and I am so proud to be one of her bridesmaids (she was a bridesmaid in my wedding last year). Katie is one of those rare gems who perfectly balances a huge love for the Lord, a love for people, a hilarious personality and a successful career as a math teacher (and math team coach, and prom sponsor, and you name it… she’s probably done it).
Katie and I became friends 4-5 years ago when she graduated from college and joined my Sunday School class. Immediately I knew we had someone special and she became my back-up teacher (and a much, much better teacher than I ever was) and when I got married, she took over for my class. She has a real heart for people and is a huge encouragement to not only me, but to everybody she encounters. Katie is one of those people who could write a tell-all book about me after all the prayer requests I’ve sent her way.
Oh, and she’s hilarious. Like, really funny. I adore her!

So of course as soon as she got engaged to her fiance, who happens to work alongside my Mr. Right at our church, I knew I wanted to make her a chevron quilt. The pattern was the easy part – the hard part was finding her the PERFECT material – it took me three different fabric stores before I found something that was just right for her.

These were some of my inspirations from Pinterest.

Scrappy chevron (swoon!)
This beautiful two-toned chevron quilt
This gorgeous multi-colored chevron quilt

Chevron in cool beach-inspired colors
This one is probably closest to the one I made, and similar quilting style.

My pattern was the same as the triangle quilt I made my new nephew, but this time I just used two colors and arranged the triangles to form a chevron. I did a little miscalculation and somehow ended up with a bunch of leftover triangles (there’s somewhere between 425-500 triangles in this baby), so stay tuned for some pillows made with the leftovers. Math was never my strong point, made more ironic since this quilt was for a math teacher. Next time I need to have her double-check my math!

Anyway, this quilt is HUGE because Katie and her fiance are both really tall. To get an idea, it’s four times the size of my last baby quilt – it’s just under the size of a queen.

Here is the back of the quilt – this brown, green, blue and pink fabric reminded me of something I’d find in Anthropologie. I quilted it very loosely so that it would be extra cuddly for those newlyweds (the more quilting, the stiffer the quilt). I love how you can see the chevron design through the back.

I used the same material as the backing to bind it – I did my typical half-machine binding, half-hand binding technique. I’ve since tried an all-machine binding, which saves several hours of hand-sewing, but my edges aren’t as straight, and since I’ve perfected the other technique, I hate to mess up the quilt at the very last stage of the game. This quilt was so big it took me about 10 hours to hand-sew the binding (while watching the Bachelorette and the new Sherlock Holmes BBC series on Hulu), but it was worth it. Check out that corner!

To Katie & Sean – I hope you have many snuggly nights under that quilt, enjoying movies or just using it to stay warm on a cold evening. Thank you for being a blessing to me – I hope every time you see it, you’re reminded of how special you are to me.

My dear readers – I’m taking a little break from quilting this summer to work on some pillows (I’m seriously considering putting a few on Etsy – do you think anybody would actually buy them?). My next quilt will be a baby quilt for our new nephew Jack (on Mr. Right’s side) who is scheduled to come in October. This one will be western and I can’t wait to brainstorm something new and fun for this special little guy.

3 Comments

  1. Coincidentally, I JUST saw this and thought of you:http://www.awaitingada.com/2012/06/bubble-quilt.htmlSeems like it would be really cute gift for a niece or nephew.

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  2. This is even more amazing in person! It is the perfect snuggling blanket. I can't wait to put it in our home!!! Love you sweet friend!

    Reply

  3. […] based on my mood and the amount of fabric I have. Sometimes I add a border and use fewer squares. My ginormous blue chevron wedding quilt was FOUR times the size of my normal baby quilts, which made it a queen. (It was a beast, but so […]

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