Tutorial Tuesday: Making Chevron from Stripes

As soon as I saw this stripe from the fabulously talanted Iza Pearl Design (Melissa Ybarra) I knew I had to have it! (It also helps that I’ve had the opportunity to meet this sweet person as I had the pleasure of teaching her a few sewing classes through CityCraft.) I let it sit with my fabric stash for a week or two (along with some of the other patterns from this collection), trying to determine the perfect project to use it on. The first thing I decided to try was to make a chevron pattern with the stripe.

It’s super easy to do! Want to try?

Layout your fabric on your cutting board. Grab your straight edge and rotary cutter for this technique. Start cutting 2″ strips (or any other size you’d like) at a 45 degree angle to your selvedge. (Some need to be cut in opposite directions. Cutting them all the same way and flipping them doesn’t work.)

Once you have 6+ strips you can lay them out to get a feel for how it will look.

I tried laying it out so it looks a little more pieced but ended up liking the matched look a little better for this specific project, or so I thought. Once I got everything trimmed down I wished I had used the more pieced look above because I had to trim off most of the gray and olive color. :(  It’d make an awesome bag front though!!

Start pinning and sewing. Because these strips were cut on the bias they can get a bit stretchy. Be sure you use the pins as much as you need. Just to be safe and ensure that my strips didn’t slip and get wonky I also used my walking foot on my machine.

Once you have them all sewed together press the seams flat.

Trim to the finished size that you need for your project, and finish sewing it up!

{Front}

{Back}

I made a cute little zippered pouch with mine! (I might have to see if Melissa will sign it for me!)

Happy Sewing!

Erin

P.S. Make sure you go see the entire collection, Cabana Blooms, from Windham Fabrics. The colors and patterns are perfect for all your summer projects!