My First Ever Quilt: Chevron Vintage Sheet-Style

I wasn't going to post this until I revamped our picnic basket, but I'm super excited about the turnout!

Let me start off by reiterating that I am not a quilter, nor do I have the desire to be like the great many of you who are.  I applaud and adore your works and dedication to the craft.  It takes sheer talent to quilt.  I had to preface this post with that notice in the event you look at how wonky this quilt is and thought that I was trying to pass as a quilter.  

I promised little miss that I would make us a picnic blanket and renew our picnic basket so that we could go to the park and enjoy, well, a picnic.  Well I got one portion done.

I started this quilt probably a couple of weeks ago and have been working ever so diligently on it until I finished a couple of days ago.  It finally cleared up long enough for me to snap a few shots (only to start to rain after I started editing photos.)  

I really wanted to try my hand at quilting before I completely wrote it off.  My dad's mom quilts and my mother's grandmother quilts, so quilting is in my bloodline (I think.)  I went for this rainbow-effect chevron (or zigzag) quilt.  The whole thing came together by accident.  I had a bunch of scraps in the zigzag fabrics and none in the contrasting strips.  After I formed zigzags in blue, yellow, and pink, I noticed that it wasn't going to be nearly long enough.  I, then, pulled out a lime green gingham to place between the blue and yellow.  After cutting the gingham to size, I realized that I had a ton of striped vintage sheets in all sorts of colors and that I should just use those instead.  So I pulled out green, purple, orange, and pink striped sheets and went to work.

The hardest thing about quilting this blanket was keeping everything together and out of the way at the same time.  I surely worked my arms to maneuver it.  Because the triangles were cut on the bias and the striped strips weren't, the stripes were slightly gathered when quilted.

It is backed with a pretty little floral that I picked up from the thrift store last week.  I purchased the fitted and flat sheet in the nice print and used the fitted for the quilt.  I used a scrap of watercolor floral print to bind it with.

Just for the sake of it, I whipped up a little quilted resting pillow as well.  I plan on making one more so we can travel with the blankets and pillows.  The backing to the pillow is a brand new sheet that I found a couple of years ago.  It was still in the package when I bought it from the thrift store.  It's still very very stiff.  I just love the crispness and boldness in the colors.

Now all I have to do is make pretty the picnic basket and wait for it to stop raining sometime soon, so we can have a nice lunch.  I can't wait to try more quilting!!