Step One

You will need a total of 21 brightly colored fat quarters and 10 half-yard cuts (or 21 fat quarters) of black and white fabrics to make this quilt.  I really love how the bright colors in the P&B Textiles Color Weave fabrics contrast with the black and white prints in their Urban Scandinavian line (all of them available here in Kirstyn Cogan’s shop).  I used a complete bundle of the Original Color Weave fabrics (24 fabrics) and chose 3 not to use.  (I pulled out the most neutral colors…nearly white, black, and light grey.)  One of the great things about these collections is that there is no “upside down” to any of the fabrics which can be tricky with HST projects.  There are stripes that have a direction, but we liked the look of those going different direction. You’ll also need to choose binding fabric from the collection.  My favorite for binding was the grey on black squiggle lines fabric.

This finished quilt measures approximately 93 x 108″which is considered a king sized quilt.  (I put it on a queen sized bed, but I wanted lots of room to drape to the floor and cover pillows.)

If you prefer a queen-sized quilt, you’ll cut out 16″ squares for finished 15″ HST blocks (14.5 inches in finished quilt).  For a Twin-Sized quilt, you’d want to cut 13.5 inch square for 12.5″ HST blocks. (12 inches in finished quilt)

Start by cutting out 17″ squares.  (This is slightly bigger than we need for finished 16″ HST blocks, but it will help us get perfect squares.  I found the easiest way to do this was to use the lines on my cutting mat.

Step Two

Pair up your fabrics into sets of 2…one black/white fabric with one colored fabric.  I tried to make sure that I paired the lighter colored fabrics with the darker Urban Scandinavian fabrics.  (Light yellow went with one of the “blacker” fabrics, etc.)  Use a quilting ruler to draw a line through the diagonal.

Step Three

Pin every few inches across the diagonal line you drew.

Step Four

Stitch 1/4 inch to EITHER SIDE of your diagonal line.  DO NOT STITCH ON THE DIAGONAL.

Step Five

Remove pins and use your rotary cutter and ruler to cut down your diagonal line between the two stitching lines.  This will give you two half-square-triangle blocks.

Iron the seam open (or to the side if you prefer…I just like mine open.)

Repeat with the other 20 pairings until you have 42 awesome blocks.

Step Six

Arrange your blocks to keep the colors and fabrics balanced.  This is how I arranged mine.

As you look at it.  Every other block in each row is rotated so that each on-point square created is half black/white and half colored.

Once you’re happy with the placement of your HST blocks, you’ll just sew them together with a 1/4 inch seam allowance.

Step Seven

I do most of my own quilting on my home machine, but because this quilt is SO large, I decided to have it professionally long-arm quilted by my friend and fellow Fairfield Master Maker Charisma Horton.  We used two layered battings for this one.  I didn’t want the quilt to be too warm (since I tend to get too warm when I sleep), but I wanted her beautiful quilting to have some extra pop to it, so we layered Quilters 80/20 batting with a layer of wool batting.  You could also achieve a similar look using some low loft polyester batting as your second layer instead of the wool, if you don’t want to have to worry about washing the wool carefully.

Charisma did a fantastic job mimicking the pattern of one of the prints in free motion quilting.

And for an extra bit of pop, she did one of the on-point squares with some accent quilting.

Step Eight

Fabric requirements are for doing a double fold binding.  If you’re doing your own quilting I find that basting spray helps immensely in keeping the layers from shifting.