Tutorial: Modern Chevron Quilt Pattern (baby quilt)

Chevrons are everywhere at the moment and I love ’em. I know I’ll want to make this chevron quilt pattern again so I’m documenting it for my forgetful future-self and anyone else who might be interested. Maybe you’d also like to fire up your sewing machine and make a version of this modern baby quilt.

ETA: I also have a multi-size PDF pattern for this quilt in the shop. It will show you how to sew the baby, throw, twin, queen and king sizes with scraps or FQs!

Modern Chevron Baby Quilt in Tangerine - a quilt tutorial by Kirsty at Bonjour Quilts

If you’ve ever thought of sewing a quilt this chevron quilt pattern is a great one to get started with. It’s a great pattern for a beginner quilter. It’s made from squares and half-square triangles which are quite easy to put together. Plus I’ve also got plenty of helpful links to guide you through the whole process, so it’s very beginner quilter friendly.

Modern Chevron Baby Quilt in Tangerine - a quilt tutorial by Kirsty at Bonjour Quilts

Before we start – here’s where I took my inspiration. A manhole cover. Romantic, oui? Just be thankful I photoshopped out the cigarette butt. I’m not sure why, but when I looked at this manhole I thought ‘oh, that’d make a cute quilt’.

Modern Chevron Baby Quilt in Tangerine - a quilt tutorial by Kirsty at Bonjour Quilts

This fun quilt pattern will produce a baby-size chevron quilt (45 x 60 inches) for your baby-wrapping pleasure. You’ll need to decide on two contrasting colours (I’ve gone tangerine and a beige/taupe) and then assemble some fabrics.

Modern Chevron Baby Quilt in Tangerine - a quilt tutorial by Kirsty at Bonjour Quilts

Fabric Requirements for your chevron quilt pattern

A great beginner project, this modern baby quilt pattern is the perfect quilt for using up scrap fabric. It also works well with larger cuts such as fat quarters and half yards.

I chose 4 different neutrals (half yard cuts of each) and 7 different tangerines (fat quarters of each). A neat trick is to find a fabric with a repeating pattern in regular rows, like this one:

Modern Chevron Baby Quilt in Tangerine - a quilt tutorial by Kirsty at Bonjour Quilts

By just altering the spacing of my cutting, I ended up with three different looking blocks from the one fabric:

Modern Chevron Baby Quilt in Tangerine - a quilt tutorial by Kirsty at Bonjour Quilts

Cut Your Fabric Squares For Your Chevron Baby Quilt

Once you’ve filled your fabric requirements, grab your rotary cutter and start cutting:

From your tangerine colours you will need a total of (180) 3 inch squares.

From your neutrals you will also need a total of (180) 3 inch squares.

Sew Your HST Units

We also need to make the 72 half-square triangles (HSTs) from the fabric requirements. What follows is an explanation of how I like to make them.

Cut Your HST Squares

Let’s start fabric cutting for the HSTs. You’ll need to cut:

(36) 3½ inch tangerine squares, and

(36) 3½ inch neutral squares.

Mark and Sew Your HSTs

Take a neutral 3½ inch square and draw a line diagonally corner to corner on the wrong side. I use a Hera marker, but a water soluble fabric marker or a grey lead pencil works too. Just don’t use a pen because the ink will melt and smear when you iron it.

Match this neutral 3½ inch square with one of your 3½ inch tangerine squares, right sides together.

Modern Chevron Baby Quilt in Tangerine - a quilt tutorial by Kirsty at Bonjour Quilts

Then using your marked line as your guide, sew a seam a quarter-inch seam either side of that line.

Modern Chevron Baby Quilt in Tangerine - a quilt tutorial by Kirsty at Bonjour Quilts

Chain piecing really speeds the process up here. Feed your units in one after the other to sew one seam, then clip them apart, flip them around and feed them all back in again to sew the other seam. Then you’ll have all your squares sewn up lickety-split.

Modern Chevron Baby Quilt in Tangerine - a quilt tutorial by Kirsty at Bonjour Quilts

You might notice I’ve evenly mixed my tangerine squares while my neutrals are still in their individual colour stacks (just lumped on top of each other). This way my tangerine fabrics will be evenly distributed among the neutrals in my HST units. (I didn’t want all of one orange fabric ending up sewn to the one neutral.) Then I could just grab from the top of each stack without thinking about it.

Once you’ve cut apart all your two square units it’s time to cut along the marker line to give yourself two HST units.

Modern Chevron Baby Quilt in Tangerine - a quilt tutorial by Kirsty at Bonjour Quilts

Press Your HST Units

Press your seams either open or to one side, as you prefer. If you’re a beginner quilter try to press and not ‘iron’. Ironing involves running the iron back and forward like you’d iron a shirt, pressing is putting the iron down, shot of steam (if you like), lift the iron up and repeat. No dragging the iron across the fabric as this stretches and distorts your lovely half-square triangles.

Modern Chevron Baby Quilt in Tangerine - a quilt tutorial by Kirsty at Bonjour Quilts

Trim Your HST Units

Now I have made these half-square triangles a wee bit larger than the 3 inch finished product required. This is so there is some fat to trim so your HSTs are accurate and make pointy looking points. Yes, it adds another step, but it makes for a good-lookin’ product.

Right, so trim/square up your HSTs to 3 inches either with a square ruler or, like me, using the 45 degree angle line on your cutting mat:

Modern Chevron Baby Quilt in Tangerine - a quilt tutorial by Kirsty at Bonjour Quilts

Lay Out Your Chevron Quilt Pattern

Now you will have all your units cut and ready to lay out in your chevron pattern. Just follow the grid below, alternating your colours within each chevron in a way that’s pleasing to your eye.

Modern Chevron Baby Quilt in Tangerine - a quilt tutorial by Kirsty at Bonjour Quilts

All laid out? Good. Break open a block of chocolate and then sew the whole thing together, again with a quarter-inch seam. First join your squares to make rows. Press the seams in the first row to the right, then in the second row to the left. Continue on pressing the rows in alternate directions so the seams will nest. Then it’s time to sew the rows together. I like to pin my fabric squares so the seams match, but some people have luck with nesting and a prayer!

Modern Chevron Baby Quilt in Tangerine - a quilt tutorial by Kirsty at Bonjour Quilts

Whee! We’re on the home stretch now. Now to make a backing. I used the tangerine left overs in mine, between two pieces of IKEA flat sheet. If you’re tired of piecing and just want to finish (we’ve all been there!), go with a single large piece of fabric.

Modern Chevron Baby Quilt in Tangerine - a quilt tutorial by Kirsty at Bonjour Quilts

Quilting Your Chevron Quilt Pattern

What quilting pattern are you going to use? It can be as simple as a large grid, using the seams as a guide or some fancy free motion quilting to highlight your chevrons. There are plenty of straight line quilting ideas in this blog post of mine.

I went for a straight-line quilting pattern echoing the chevron shapes.

Modern Chevron Baby Quilt in Tangerine - a quilt tutorial by Kirsty at Bonjour Quilts

I drew the quilting pattern on my quilt top with a water-soluble marker, one inch from my outer seams (added bonus is you aren’t quilting over thick seam lines where multiple layers meet).

Make your quilt sandwich with backing, wadding/batting and then your quilt top. You can pin them together (great tutorial on this at Red Pepper Quilts) or you can spray baste them together. I chose to spray baste as my quilting pattern had lots of pivots and I wanted the extra hold as I hauled the quilt through my machine.

Modern Chevron Baby Quilt in Tangerine - a quilt tutorial by Kirsty at Bonjour Quilts

Choose the thread colour for quilting – I went with thread to match each fabric colour but you could easily use tangerine on your neutral chevrons and neutral on your tangerine fabric for a different look. Don’t forget to consider the back as well as your quilt top. In retrospect I wish I’d only used tangerine thread on the back (bobbin thread) so the quilting stood out even more on my neutral backing. We live and learn, huh?

Binding Your Chevron Quilt Pattern

Once you’ve quilted it’s time to bind. My favourite binding making/attaching tutorials are here: at Crazy Mom Quilts and Red Pepper Quilts.

Modern Chevron Baby Quilt in Tangerine - a quilt tutorial by Kirsty at Bonjour Quilts

Once your binding is attached you have to trim excess batting and backing, fold the binding over to enclose the raw edges of the quilt and then secure by sewing. You can machine sew it with precision (Red Pepper Quilts tutorial) or go for a quicker machine sew by using a zigzag stitch (you can see my tutorial on zigzag stitch quilt binding here).

Modern Chevron Baby Quilt in Tangerine - a quilt tutorial by Kirsty at Bonjour Quilts

I chose a thread to match the backing (rather than the binding) and used a long length of it doubled up. Thread the two cut ends through the needle (the uncut loop will hang at the other end). I put my needle through this loop when making the first stitch to secure the thread without having to use a knot.

I sew an uneven ladder stitch – about a quarter inch in the binding (I just zip along inside the fold) and then a smaller stitch into the quilt back and batting before heading back up into the binding.

And I love using binding clips to hold it all in place; much more friendly than pins.

Modern Chevron Baby Quilt in Tangerine - a quilt tutorial by Kirsty at Bonjour Quilts

After it’s all done, throw it in the wash to get rid of your water soluble marker, dry and then find a baby to snuggle with. Mmmm, babies.

Modern Chevron Baby Quilt in Tangerine - a quilt tutorial by Kirsty at Bonjour Quilts

Other Quilt Sizes

As mentioned before this chevron baby quilt pattern is the perfect quilt for a beginner quilter. It’s also one of those modern quilts that’s easy to scale up to make other quilt sizes. Once you’ve tackled a beginner quilt, you could upsize to a larger quilt size.

The Modern Chevron Quilt Pattern will make it easy for you to upsize your chevron baby quilt. The quilt pattern has instructions for 5 quilt sizes: baby, throw, twin, queen and king.

The pattern will show you how to use FQs and half yards to make this pattern, which is great for stash busting. You can find the Modern Chevron Quilt Pattern right here, in my pattern shop.

I wish you many chevrons and babies and plenty of time to enjoy them all!

Modern Chevron Baby Quilt in Tangerine - a quilt tutorial by Kirsty at Bonjour Quilts

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