Hi, I’m Jenny from the Missouri Star Quilt Company and I have a super fun block for you to make today.  We’re talking about this Chevron block and, let me show you how to do that.  The fabric I’m using for this project is a packet of ten inch squares and it’s called “Violette” by Amy Butler.  Just a beautiful, fun, eclectic line of prints, and I just love it.  We’re also going to need a bunch of ten inch squares to match them, so if we have forty two ten inch prints squares, we’re going to need forty two ten inch white squares because we’re going to be making half square triangles.  This is a half square triangle project and I’ve just fallen in love with this block!  So, let me show you how to do that.

So what we’re going to do is, we are going to pick a color and we are going to put them right sides together.  A white square, a background square, and your colored square, just like this, and we are going to draw an “X” on this block diagonally, corner to corner.  Now, this is a great method of getting a lot of half square triangles at once and, I mean, I just love it.  You’re going to get eight out of this block.  So, I’m just going to take my pen here and I’m going to draw an “X” this way and an “X” this way.  Alright, there we go.  Now, I like, kind of like, to come out from the middle on both ends.  It always seems like if I try to draw my line and start from the edge it kind of bunches up, so I like to kind of come from the, the middle, the middle out, just like that.

Alright, now you can see here I have an “X” on here and what I’m going to do now is, I am going to sew a quarter inch away from the, from my drawn line on all four sides.  So, these two sides and these two sides out here.  So, let’s go to the sewing machine and do that.

This is so fun.  I love anything where you’re, you’re able to get a lot more, quickly.  So we’re sewing right down the line on this and we’re going to whip this around and sew right down the other side.  Alright, now we’re going to do the same thing on the other drawn line, quarter inch away from each side, just like that.  Keep the edge of your presser foot right along that line and just sail down.  There we go.

Alright, now what we’re going to do… I like to line it up on my mat so I know exactly where I am and then I’m going to cut horizontally and vertically.  So, my first is going to be five inches in, because I’m on a ten inch square.  You’re going to make sure that you’re lined up on the edge of your, your ruler is lined up on the edge of your fabric. You’re going to come in there and it should cross right where this crisscrosses in the middle.  Then I’m just going to turn this.  Line them up again and come in again five inches.  There we go.

Alright, now what we also have to do is cut on our drawn lines as well.  So, we’re going, I’m going to move these apart a little bit and then I’m going to run my ruler right down that line and cut right on the line, just like that, and then one over here.  You don’t actually have to move those apart, I just did it so I could make sure all my lines would line up, just like that.  So, we’re cutting that one and then we’re cutting this one.

Now what we have is eight of these -- eight half square triangles and, I mean, it’s just so fun how fast that happens.  So then we need to come over here to the ironing board and I’m going to lay all these over here with the dark color to the top and then when I put my iron on them, I’ll be able to set all those seams at once, just like this, and then I’m just going to start and lift this one up and roll it back and keep doing it until I got all eight done.

Alright. Now these blocks should come out pretty close to four and a half and, if you’d like to, you can square them.  This one looks pretty good.  Let me check these.  They shouldn’t be, if your seams are straight and you’re cutting, your cutting is straight, they should be pretty close to four and a half, and mine look pretty good so far.  If you need to square them up though, go ahead and do that.  Square them up to four and half.

Now, what’s cool about this block is that this little pile of half square triangles is going to make two blocks because it takes four blocks to make each unit.  So, we have two where we sew the colors together and two where we sew the whites together, like this, and it makes this little chevron block and we still have four more.  So, that’s what I mean. It makes two blocks, so, again, we have two where we sew the colors together and two where we sew the whites together, like this.  So, look at that.  Out of one cut.  That’s pretty awesome.

So, let’s go to the sewing machine and sew these together.  I’m going to sew one set where m--, I sew my color pieces together and one set where I sew my white pieces together.  Let's do that first before we do anything else.  Alright, here we go.  Now I take my, a few stitches, anchor it, and then check to make sure I’m still lined up and I’m going to do the same thing here.  I like to get that stitched under the needle and then lined up so my folds match.

Then what we’re going to do with this is, we’ll press these open so they lay nice and flat and then we’re going to put these together, just like you would a four patch.  So, we’re going to make sure our seams are going opposite directions and they can nest right up there in the center.  You can, you can clip off that little dog ear if you want; I think I will, right here, and then we’re just going to line these up and make sure they fit.

Alright, there we go.  Now let’s open this up and see how we did.  So, take a look at this.  Isn’t this darling?  I mean this is such a great little block and so versatile.  There are so many things you can do with it.  Let’s take a look at this project behind me.  So, what I did with this one was I put it together and I did a row where they’re all going up and a row where they’re all facing down.  Next row going up.  I mean, just as easy as that.  We have four across, five down.  We have a little three inch border, that’ll take you about three quarters of a yard of fabric, and so this is all we did right here, just like this.  We did a row where they’re all going up.  The next row, they’re all coming down, just as easy as that.

So, now I have a confession to make. This is Missouri Star Confessionals, haha! I actually know that a packet of ten inch precut squares, forty two of them of color, forty two of white, is going to make a queen sized quilt and I know you know this isn’t a queen back here, but here’s what happened. I started laying these out and I started trying some different designs and I had so much fun laying them out that I actually sewed together several projects.  So, let me show you what we did.

First one was, we put them together, like this, and I realized that makes this awesome diamond shape and so I thought, “well, we could do diamonds this way,” you know, or, “we could do diamonds this way,” and so I turned them long, like this, and I put them together like a, like a table runner.  I have this one here to show you.  It’s so cute.  Look at this.  How cute is this?  I mean, it’s just absolutely darling.  And then, if you go ahead and stagger them, like this, you know, up and down, you’re going to get this cool project over here.

So, let me show you how this one goes.  I’m telling you, I kind of went a little nuts with this block.  So here’s this quilt here.  Now, see, they’re still in the diamonds, but the diamonds are, are staggered and so you get a row that chevrons through there with the peaks as well and so it makes a really fun project.  So, I know there’s loads of ways to set this together.  I hope you guys enjoy making this block and setting it together and I can hardly wait to see what you create.  So, we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the Chevron Block from the Missouri Star Quilt Company.