Tutorial — Lickety Split, A Modern Chevron Quilt

When I shared my Lick­ety Split quilt on Ins­tagram this week I asked if any­one would be inter­ested in a tutori­al.   Quite a few people said yes so I’m back again to share a quick tutori­al with you all.

This tutori­al is for a baby sized quilt top (42” x 46”) made using 3.5” unfin­ished half square tri­angles (HST).   You could increase the size of the quilt by sew­ing with lar­ger half square tri­angles or, by adding extra chev­rons to each column and adding extra columns. You could also make a mini quilt or cush­ion cov­er using smal­ler half square tri­angles. You will need:

• 168 3.5” half square tri­angles (8 for each chevron)
• 12 – 3.5” squares of back­ground fabric
• 3 – 2” x 12.5” strips of back­ground fabric
• 4 – 2” x 47” strips of back­ground fabric
• Col­our­ing sheet if you’d like to plan the lay­out of your colours/fabrics which can be down­loaded here.

I used leftover ‘ears’ from the fly­ing geese I made for my Down South quilt so only had to trim them to size.   If you’d prefer to make HST’s spe­cific­ally for this pro­ject you can fol­low the steps shown below.   If you already have your HST’s sor­ted you can skip ahead to the next step.

1. On the back of a 4.5” square of back­ground fab­ric draw a pen­cil line from one corner to the oppos­ite corner.   Place the square on top of a print fab­ric square the same size (in this case 4.5”).
2. Using a ¼” seam sew down both sides of the line.
3. Cut along the drawn line.
4. Press both HST’s towards the print fab­ric and then trim to 3.5” square.

Mak­ing Lick­ety Split Rather than sew­ing tra­di­tion­al style square quilt blocks I made Lick­ety Split by piecing rows and then join­ing those rows to make the three columns of chev­rons.   Each column is pieced in the same way.    The quilt assembly dia­gram below can be used as a ref­er­ence  as you work through the tutori­al.Tip: Know­ing how you want to arrange your fab­rics will make sew­ing the rows simple and fast.   If you haven’t already, its worth using the col­our­ing sheet to work this out and then hav­ing that beside you as you pin each row. Each column has 7 chev­ron units.  For each column you will need to make:-

• 1 top row
• 7 chev­ron centre rows
• 6 chev­ron point rows
• 1 end row

Sew each rows togeth­er using a ¹⁄₄″ seam and then press seams in altern­ate dir­ec­tions.   Join all 15 rows togeth­er refer­ring to the quilt assembly dia­gram to make one column and then add a 2″ x 12.5″ strip to the top (open chev­ron end).   The com­pleted column will meas­ure 12.5″ x 47″.   Make 3 columns. Once your columns are assembled the final step in mak­ing the quilt top is to add the 2″ by 47″ strips.    To make the strips cut 5 strips 2″ x width of fab­ric.  Join strips togeth­er end to end and then cut 5 — 2″ x 47″ strips.    I recom­mend pin­ning the strips in place before sew­ing them to ensure they stay nice and straight as you run them through your machine. Tip: If you are mak­ing a big­ger or smal­ler quilt you will need to adjust the size of the top and sash­ing strips to suit your HST’s.    To make sure the chev­rons line up cor­rectly across the quilt your strips will need to be:-

           Half the width of the fin­ished HST’s + ¹⁄₂″ seam allowance. 

For example, if you are using 4.5″ HST’s the top strips will be 2.5″ x 16.5″ & the sash­ing strips will also be 2.5″ wide.    If you are using 1.5″ HST’s the top strips will need to be 1″ x 4.5″, the sash­ing strips will also be 1″ wide. If you run into any trouble please flick me an email, happy to help and of course, if you make your own Lick­ety Split don’t for­get to tag me on social media so I can see your gor­geous creations.

Until next time,