Crazy For Chevrons

Chevrons seem to be pretty popular in the paper crafting world these days. I have been having fun creating my own chevron patterns using paper scraps. Here is a card that I made and below you will find a picture tutorial showing you the method I used. Again, this is a method from the quilting world (it's been years since I have done any quilting) and you will find that the possibilities are limitless.

I used this weeks Freshly Made Sketch #75

Supplies - Card is standare A2 size - All products are CTMH except where noted
Paper - Chantilly, For Always, White Daisy & Buttercup CS, Black CS (unknown)
Stamp - Thank You
Ink - Black
Accessories - Black Button (stash), Black Hemp

Chevron Pattern Tutorial:

1) The first thing you need to do is select the papers you want to use. For the card above I used five different papers and for this tutorial I used only three. You can make each paper different or use as few as two. I lay them out to see what looks good together, what effect I want and what order I want to place them in.

In the photo below you will see the strips that I have cut for this pattern. I used a green print, a pink print and a white cardstock. I cut eight of each at 1/4" x 5 1/2" (total of 24 strips) - this gives a finished trim piece of 6 1/4" wide x 4" high (5 1/4" high if you don't trim off the points). If you wanted to use more than three prints then you would adjust the numbers accordingly. You can cut your strips longer, which will give you more chevrons or you can cut more strips which will make your chevrons longer)

2) Now you will adhere these strips to a piece of cardstock (I use a lightweight inexpensive cardstock). I used a two way bonding adhesive, you can use whatever works for you just keep in mind that you need to cover the entire back side of each strip since you will be cutting the strips later. Start gluing down the first strip to the bottom left corner of the cardstock lining up the edges with the bottom and side of the cardstock. Continue gluing down your strips in the order of your pattern making sure that you offset each piece to the right by a 1/4" (if your strips were 1/2" wide which would probably be good for scrapbook pages the offset would be 1/2"). For this pattern I used 4 of each of my three colours.

3) Now rotate your cardstock piece 180 degrees and start gluing the rest of your strips to the bottom right hand corner making sure you offset 1/4" to the left and add the strips in the same order as the first.

4) The next step requires trimming your pieces at a 45 degree angle. Remember back if you will to high school math class (this goes quite a way back for me) and those little math sets with the plastic and metal bits. For the life of me I couldn't remember what any of the pieces were called and had to look it up. If you happen to have the plastic right angled triangle piece you can use that (it's actually called a 45 degree set square) or you can make your own. Take a square of cardstock (mine happened to be 5 1/2" x 5 1/2") and cut it exactly in half on a diagonal to give you two right angled triangles as pictured below.

5) Using the triangle you just created you will trim your pieces at a 45 degree angle as shown below. Line up the bottom of the triangle with the bottom of your stacked strips lining up the long side of the triangle with the offset edge moving it over so that you can see all of the corners (this is hard to explain please see the photo below). Make a pencil mark at the top and bottom. Turn paper 180 degrees and repeat on other side. These marks will be used as a guide to trim the piece.

6) Cut the cardstock close to the top strip of your first stacked strip, then using your paper trimmer and the pencil marks as guides trim as shown below. Trim off any excess cardstock.

7) Repeat steps 5 and 6 for the other stacked strip.

8) Now you will cut the above pieces into strips. These can be cut to any width. For my yellow/black card above I cut them 1/2" wide, which worked out really well since I have a full line down my trimmer that I could use as a guide since you can't butt these pieces up to the top of your trimmer. Since I wanted to cut the pink/green pieces at 5/8" wide I created a guide line by adhering a strip of cardstock to my trimmer with glue dots at the 5/8" mark. (you may be tempted to simply measure off and mark 5/8" at the top and bottom of your pieces, but believe me this will not work)

9) Now you can glue these down directly to your project or if you are making a trim piece glue them to a piece of copy paper and trim to the desired size. (I glue them to copy paper rather than cardstock so the finished piece won't get too thick). Below is my finished pattern - I haven't glued it down yet since I haven't decided what I will do with it yet. You can also just add a single chevron to your project.

I hope these instructions made sense. Have fun!