A little over a year ago, I decided that I needed to start quilting. Something I’ve always wanted to do, but seemed daunting. I tried it once when I was expecting my daughter, and I didn’t know what I was doing, and cut a million tiny squares and they were not all the same size. Needless to say, it was a disaster. So I gave up. We received some lovely quilts as baby gifts, and I just put it out of my mind.

But my daughter was actually in need of a quilt for her newly-converted crib. I wanted to give her a “big girl” bed with sheets and a lightweight quilt. So I decided to start making one. Plus, I saw a jelly roll of fabric at Joann that I impulsively bought because it was multi-colored with silver polka dots, and I’m a sucker for dots. Plus, I thought that pre-cuts would be easier to work with than trying to cut all my own fabric.

I wasn’t sure what to do with the fabric strips, however, until one day I noticed a Kleenex box with a chevron pattern. Inspiration comes from weird places, huh? I decided to make a chevron quilt.

Since I didn’t know anything about quilting and wanted to actually succeed this time, I did a lot of research, took a couple Craftsy classes, and read a few books. I found Elizabeth Hartman’s book The Practical Guide to Patchwork to be very helpful.

But I couldn’t find a chevron quilt pattern that I liked that worked with the pre-cut strips. (There are several out there that are very complicated with seams and sewing and making blocks — not for me.) So I made my own pattern. I referenced the books Patchwork City and Scraps, Inc. that used an offset stacking method to create a chevron design, and I knew what I wanted to do.

I bought another mini jelly roll in white and cut most of the strips in half lengthwise, so they were 1 1/4″ wide rather than two and half. I used the rainbow dot fabric and arranged them so the colors went warm to cool and back again. I decided to make long strips instead of blocks. I found a white chevron fabric for the backing. I chose a grey fabric for the binding.

I’m really proud of this little quilt. It’s definitely not perfect and I could point out a million mistakes, but I decided to cut myself a little slack since it’s my first quilt. Of course, since it was so fun I’m going to make more quilts. I have so many ideas! I can barely wait to start the next one! I’ve been buying lots of fabric and Aurifil thread. I particularly love Moda, but Cotton + Steel is also really working for me. I’m going to make a baby quilt or two next for some soon-to-be-born little ones.

I’ll post a step-by-step of this next.