Tips & Techniques 232 - How to sew a patchwork braid or chevron.

hi I thought today I'd show you a little bit about how you might sew some sort of a chevron braid that has various different names and I'm showing you I'm suggesting maybe a vertical column or it might be a horizontal type thing but I thought I'd just show you how we might just do one of these and how we're going to trim it down afterwards so I've gone ahead I'm using some two and a half inch wide strips now they might be leftovers from a project or you might have a whole new exciting roll of strips or whatever it is you might have cut your own from your own fabrics and either way I've used two and a half inch wide strips when we start off we need a square so it's a two and a half inch square and then when we start adding sides we add one side then we add the other and I've chosen to do mines so that each are the little chevron stripes it's the same fabric you may have a different way of wanting to do it but that's what I'm doing today so I've gone ahead and cut some strips into some lengths so because I'm using two and a half inch strips I've got a two and a half inch square my first strip goes on here and I'll show you in a second how we're doing that and it's two and a half inches by four and a half inches it's to make the size that I'm making you can make different sizes the other strip is two and a half by six and a half so really we only need one of these to get started so for as many columns as you're doing then you're going to need one of these otherwise you need an even number of the two and a half by four and a half and two and a half by six and a half so we'll get started and I'll show you how we get started so I'm just going to have my two and a half inch square my four and a half inch long strip put the right sides together and I'm just going to sew that quarter inch seam as you would normally so it's not the full length of the four and a half and there we are that wasn't hard we've done that little bit I'm going to suggest that you press as you go because it really does help things sit nicely and I like to press from the right side and press that over now I've pressed away from the square in the longer term it's better the seams are going that way a little bit fiddly when you've got bit sitting out there don't panic too much about that because most of that will be trimmed off so there is a little bit of trimming that goes on so we've got our square we've got a first strike and now we're going to pop the next stripe on so I'm going to go ahead and put that on there I'm going to sew that seam to the end of the square so there's lots of different ways of doing these Chevron's or braids you can put squares at the top point you can do make them narrow wide lots of things but we're just doing two and a half inch strips it's that one done and I'm going to press that now so now we've got that's sitting nicely on there just trying to press that the seam so that it sits flat at the end of the square there and we've got a nice-looking piece here we've got our square short strip long strip so now we just continue up as long as you want to make the strip putting on the short one first every time and then the long one afterwards so I'll just do a couple walls so that you can just get the hang of that you probably already have again I'm gonna press and then I've got my next long strip and as I said you could mix your colors around you can do a really scrappy one you could just alternate two colors depressing so I think you've got the hang of how that goes now start with a square short strip long strip short strip long strip pressing between each one so that you end up with this nice Chevron style stripe going up which you can see that I've got here and then I'm going to show you how to trim that so I mentioned that you might want to just do two colors so I've started doing one here just in two colors this is kind of fun and again it could be going across the course be going up and down it could be going up the other way whichever way you like really could be going diagonally good that's me so many choices in life so I've already started with a runaway strip I've already started trimming this one here so that you can see what happens so these are the bits obviously not true but we want it trimmed so there's a nice straight edge so if you were making strips like this multiples of them and you were wanting to join them together you'd be able to match the scenes at the joint if you didn't want to you could put a session between or it might be just one strip on its own there's lots of things in that area but we're just putting it together today so you may find that with your ruler you can do that but you most likely if you have one to use a longer ruler for this so that you can keep things nice and straight so with these measurements that I've used on this today we're going to end up with a cut strip six inches wide so it'll finish at five and a half inches when you sew it into your course but just for the trimming I'm going to lay the ruler on here I've got the edge coming through the little corners so that we're cutting through those right through those corners and you should also be able to see in this room is gonna come fish mine on it should be able to have line up because we know we're cutting to six inches wide we want that three-inch to go up that Center points here so it's probably easier to show you on this strong color piece so we've got a couple of things going on here we want to pick this corner lined up on the edge and we want to keep our center line lined up on the points and then we just trim off those little triangles on the edge it's really not that hard and there we've got a nice straight edge so now we need to do the other edge as well same thing and turn it round this is where a longer ruler is helpful if you can't do the whole thing because you've got two points to line up you can just do a segment at a time or you could do what I've done and start doing some add some more strips and then trim those so I've got my three inch line coming up that Center I've got my little edge coming through these little corners here it's all loving this edge here because it's already cut it's lined up it's all looking pretty good and that's how you trim it so you could continue on making that longer you could have you can I could slice that off now and I'd have a nice straight top at the edge there's lots of different ways so I just trimmed this one as well so that you just see then again it's not bottom here if it's sitting as stretch as you reasonably can I'm going to put my three-inch line up through my Center there and it's the rule is not long enough to do the whole strip I've got my little point sitting on the edge there trim off those triangles trim them as far as you reasonably can then you can move that down and finish trimming so you've got this edge to line up to now but always just keep an eye that your sensors sitting rights as well because fabric moves around the ridge it doesn't always sit exactly where you think it should it likes to think for itself so I can come back and do the other side now may that on so another line you could line up now because we know it's going to be six inches wide if you can see through your ruler you can lie on that edge on the six make sure your three is sitting in that central line there make sure your edges are sitting all right over this size four it's looking pretty good then just trim off those little corners and that's how you can make a little Chevron or brave or however you like using some two and a half inch strips so remember this strip is going to end up six inches wide cut so it'll be a five and a half inch when you're ready to win its own in now if you're just trimming off the bottom edge here because it's got to have a bottom straight edge same thing you can just go straight through the corners but the little square where you join to it make sure things are sitting nice and straight enjoy have a really nice straight edge at the bottom and the same thing will apply at the top you can line up line it up this is where the lines on the board are really handy because you can lie anything up and you can position it so that you can get a nice straight edge there so what you should be able to do here is if you ruler has got a quarter-inch line in from the edge line that up with your little point so that you you've still got your quarter inch seam allowance make sure other lines are sitting straight and you can slice that off I'm not going to because I'm going to add more to this strip but that would be how you do that so that if you have your quarter inch lines through that point and you cut beyond that it will sit beautifully so that if you're joining it into something and you want that straight edge to be level it will be level with your orange points so that was the little Chevron cup with different color ways suggestions two and a half inch strips cut but to an another inch square to start two and a half by four and a half for the short length two and a half by six and a half for the long length trim to measure six inches wide five and a half inches finished have fun with your two and a half inch Chevron's thank you

Channel: GourmetQuilter

Views: 83,329

Rating: 4.9381199 out of 5

Keywords: quilt, quilting, patchwork, sewing, craft, gourmetquilter, patchwork braid, patchwork chevron, 2 1/2 inch strips

Id: YY9G198Uv4s

Length: 11min 5sec (665 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 30 2019