I haven’t designed a whole lot with chevrons, although I really love the shape. In fact, I think it’s been about two years (!) since I posted a chevron design! Sunday sketch #52, posted back in June 2017, was an idea I had for using up a stack of 5″ Carolyn Friedlander charms (the result of which is still in my WIP pile, mostly because I need more background fabric and I can’t remember the exact shade/manufacturer of white that I used for the blocks I’ve already made… oops!).

Sunday sketch #80, which became the Festive Flocks quilt pattern, also had a few chevrons, but they weren’t the main focus of the design.

Anyway, I recently picked up my A4-sized Rhodia dot pad and just started sketching chevrons randomly overlapping on the page.

Whenever I create an asymmetrical design like this, I still try to keep it balanced. So you’ll often see that a design that starts at the bottom left with end at the top right, or vice versa. And, if you drew a line across the middle (horizontally or vertically), you’d probably find roughly the same number of lines or shapes on each side. It’s how my order-loving brain copes with disorder 🙂

The movement in this design totally reminds me of a flutter of butterflies just randomly flying around, flapping their wings and getting in each other’s way.

I love all the little (and some big) shapes that appear when the chevrons overlap: squares, rectangles, triangles, diamonds…. And I love how, when it gets really busy, it’s hard to see where the chevrons end and those shapes begin. It’s all just lines and angles.

This design would be fairly easy to piece, although possibly tricky (or at least time-consuming) to plan out. I figure any design that’s created on a grid can be made in fabric with a few calculations. This one would be quite a few calculations… but it’s doable with a bunch of half-square triangles and quarter-square triangles. It would just take a lot of planning. Especially if you wanted to play around with colour and create the effect of transparency.