This is possibly my favorite quilt, and it’s certainly the one that has had the most “how can I make one” questions as I was making it, so I thought I’d share some tips on how to make your own.

First, the story behind it:  This quilt is a gift for my best friend Kim, who is engaged to Matt.  I wanted to make a quilt for them that would illustrate the blending of two hearts, two lives and two families.  I named it Lava Meets Sea, because when lava hits the sea it makes rock, a strong foundation.

To start yours, decide on the colors you’d like to use.  To make it easy on myself, I bought bundles of fat quarters of coordinating reds and blues.  Both are Colorstory Fat Quarter Bundles by Robert Kaufman.  The red is called Hot Spice, the blue is Grecian Waters.  This gives you a wide range of lights and darks in each color to work with, but keep in mind that this quilt is based on value (the depth of color) as much as it is on color itself.  Be sure when choosing your colors and making your blocks that you continue the pattern of dark and light even as you change colors.  With the bundles of colors I chose, the red bundle is darker than the blue, so notice how the colors meet in the middle of the quilt.  The darker shades of the red are used with the paler shades of blue to keep the dark and light values moving through the center of the quilt where the colors meet.  It is very important that you not rely on the different colors to create the effect, make sure you’re keeping the dark and light values even through the color changes.  That might be easier to see from this photo where I was first laying out blocks.

Here’s my super fancy chart.  Notice that this was not meant to be shared with the public, as I even wrote my optometrist appointment reminder at the top of the page.  *Sigh*  This makes a generous lap sized quilt, big enough to share for a nap on the couch.

If you follow my chart, you’ll want to cut 201 red squares and 195 blue squares for a total of 396 squares.  Then you’ll want to make 127 red blocks, 121 blue blocks and 148 mixed blocks for the middle.  (I’m not sure that I kept completely to the chart, but it is helpful when you first start laying out the blocks.)  You can see how I separated my colors into two stacks each of dark, medium and light, one for the “solid” red (or blue) and another for the mixed (middle) area.

The blocks for this quilt are the most simple blocks you can make, half square triangles.  Even if you’re new to sewing, with just a little practice you can make perfect blocks.  There’s a full tutorial here if you need to learn the method.  (I started with five inch squares just as in the tutorial.)  The tutorial will explain to separate colors into dark, medium and light and then mix them together to get the contrast you need for each side of the block.  By looking at the photos here, you should be able to lay out the blocks to form the diamond pattern that flows across the quilt.  Remember, if you’ve made half square triangles with contrasting values, you can create many different designs just by changing the direction of the blocks.  Play around with them and you may find a design you like more than this one!

I chose a plain black binding, something that wouldn’t distract from the strong pattern of the quilt.

Please let me know if you have any questions about construction, and I’d love to see your photos if you make one!  Please link me up so I can see what you made.  :)