ruby2shoes

I have just finished cutting out my gazillion HSTs to put together a chevron quilt for my grandson. I'm doing it in white and 12 different patterned blues. Up to now I have been happily constructing my chevrons BUT grabbing my next bunch of HSTs with stripes I now realise that my stripes on one side of the chevron are vertical and on the other half, are horizontal! It's too late to do anything about it....all my material is cut and HSTs sewn and I'm guessing it won't be as obvious to my grandson but I could just kick myself! What basic error did I do when preparing my HSTs? How could I have avoided this?

merrylouw

It depends on how you made your hst squares. If you laid a square of neutral on top of a square of stripe, drew a line on the diagonal, and sewed a quarter inch on either side of the line, the cut in between, that's how it happened. The only way I can think of to avoid the problem is to cut each triangle of stripe individually, then piece to a neutral triangle.

Any other ideas anyone?

quiltingbuddy

I always have to think through these types of things before I cut, and lay them out almost individually like auditioning or I get stripes wrong. If it were me and I was making it for a kid I'd probably just go with it like you said. He'll never notice it wasn't supposed to go like that.

cjsews

You probably needed to make two rows one of each direction. I don't know if you can avoidable. To get the two sets might have to try sewing half of them in half in opposite directions

faykilgore

I've lost count of the times I've used directional fabric with HST's and realized I can only use half of them, or have blocks with both vertical & horizontal patterns. You can't cut them on folded strips or cut squares on the diagonal. To have all going the same direction, you have to cut triangles on a single layer of fabric, or strips all right side up. If it's only directional one way, you can save fabric. The frustrating ones are double-directional, such as little critters lined up in a row, or words.

ruby2shoes

Eeeeekkkkk....cut out individual triangles and then seam......triangles scare the billy-oh out of me! Luckily all my other blue fabrics are fine "any which way" so it's just going to be the stripes that will be a bit odd.....oh wait a minute she wails....I have another directional lot peeking out at me under the pile! oh dear, it's going to be a long, long afternoon!
Thanks for all comments.

bearisgray

can you arrange them so that the different directions look like you meant to do it that way?

ruby2shoes

Yes bearisgray that's what I am going to do. I've had a bit of a fiddle, done a shift at work, come home and had several coffees, and a wine, and another play with them and think I am happy with how I've matched them. The other directional fabric is not quite so screamingly obvious so as long as I am really careful with matching my pieces I should be fine. Thanks everyone for the "hand holding"!!!

bearisgray

I also learned that about stripes and directions. First time that happened - it was definitely a "What the????"

huskyquilter

I'm curious which method you used as well. I've had this problem so many times, I just avoid stripes in hsts unless I'm doing something completely scrappy. Even when I try to think ahead and do it right, I manage to miscalculate because of rotation.