Hi, I’m Jenny from the Missouri Star Quilt Company.
Take a look at this gorgeous quilt behind me.
Isn’t this so pretty?
I love this fabric.
Every once in a while a fabric comes out that I kind of fall in love with.
This fabric is called “Front Porch”, and it’s by Jan Paddock for Moda.
And I just adore it; I think it’s just gorgeous.
And I thought it was perfect for this lattice block.
This is the block we’re talking about right here.
It’s just a charm pack block that’s cut on the diagonal with a lattice piece put in.
Simple, easy!
Let me show you how to do that.
So to make this quilt, what you’re going to need is you’re going to need four charm
packs or one layer cake.
And you’re going to need about a yard and a half of background fabric or a honey bun.
The honey buns we’re using inch and half strips here so the honey bun works or you
can cut your own strips out of a yard and half of fabric.
The border is about 4 inches of fabric and about 4 inches wide.
And the whole quilt altogether makes a quilt that is about, about 65” by 75”, somewhere
in that general area.
So it makes a good size quilt.
So to make this block, what we’re going to do is we’re going to take our charm pack
squares, just like this, just one of them, I only need one.
And we’re going to cut this on the diagonal.
Now one of things that causes people to shy away from this block is that it’s hard to
line up from side to side.
But I have a great trick for you.
So I’ve cut this on the diagonal and now we’re going to set these aside.
And, and what you’re going to have to, the measurements you’re going to have to remember
is your diagonal measurement plus one.
So this diagonal measurement is 7 inches so your strip is going to be 8 inches.
Now I’ve already cut all my inch and half-strips right here and you know you can, so then you
need to cut them into 8 inch blocks.
You can stack them up or you can fold them over so that you are cutting, you know more,
more, making less cuts and getting more cuts out of them.
And I like to do that.
So I’m going to stack up a couple of my strips here, and then I’m going to move
these out of the way because then we don’t want any accidents.
And I’m going to go ahead and cut off my selvedges right here.
And then I’m going to count over eight.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and I’m going to make that cut right there.
So that gives me the eight, eight inch strip for the center of my block.
Now here’s a trick so that you know how to line them up.
When I do this, I fold them in half so the points go right together like that and I bring
them over here to the iron, and I’m just going to touch that inside curve so it makes
a little, bitty crease right there.
You can see that little crease.
And I’m going to do that on both pieces.
And you’re going to put right sides together when you do this.
Make sure that your little triangle is folded right sides together.
And I’ll show you why.
So now we’re going to take our eight inch piece and we are also going to fold that right
in half, and these need to be pretty exact, so we’re going to fold this right in half.
And we’re going to lay it face down so that is peaks up like that.
Now, where that peaks up, you are also going to lay your triangle, so the peak lays right
on the peak, and that is just another way of helping you line them up.
You’re going to grab those two where they match up exactly, put a pin in there.
Because if these get off, the whole block gets wonky, so you want it to be nice and
straight.
And then we’re going to take this over to the sewing machine and sew this down, just
a quarter of an inch.
So here we are.
We’re just going to sew this straight down the edge.
And then we’re going to take our pin out and we’re going to line up the other side.
We’re just going to lay this back like this, line up the other side on the, on the, make
sure that the little humps match up.
And then we’re going to put our pin in there.
And we’re going to sew this one a quarter of an inch as well.
And this really insures that your blocks will be nice and straight.
Lattice block is a really easy block to do but sometimes it can get off a little bit
and it’s frustrating for people.
So I’m going to take my pin out and make sure that’s lined up right on there.
Sew that down.
Alright, and now we’re ready to press.
So here’s how our block looks just as it is before we do our ironing and our pressing.
We’re going to come over here and we’re going to press to the dark side.
So, we’re going to lay that out.
And so now our block, it looks like this and we need to cut these ends off.
So, how I do that is I’m going to lay this right in half, match up my peaks and my edges,
and I’m going to iron a little, I’m just going to iron this right in half so it lays
down, just gently.
Then I’m going to take my ruler and I’m going to use the edge of my triangle as my
measuring edge, and just zip this end off here and I’m going to put this over here,
and zip this end off here.
And then we’re going to open this up and then we’re going to have a nice little square.
Let me iron this out.
Just like that.
So, now what you’re going to do is you’re going to lay your quilt out, you’re going
to lay it, you know, you’re going to set all your squares out.
And when you do that, you want to make sure that you’re, you’re matching color to
color and white to white.
So it’s going to have this zigzag look to it like this.
And then as we come down here, we stick with the white to white and color to color to make
sure that they just line up perfectly, this way.
And that will give you your lattice look.
Now when you go to sew these together, what you want to do is you want to make sure that
the part, right up here by the white part, you want to make sure this is the part that
lines up.
So you’re just going to look ever so carefully, make sure those pieces are right together,
and you’re going to put a little pin in there, and then you’re going to make sure
these corners are together down on the bottom.
And so you’ve got a little bit of play room there so if you have a piece that’s a little
bit bigger like this one is, that’s the piece you put on the bottom so that it will
ease it in.
So I’m going to start over here now and sew this down.
Excuse me.
That’s a great, little trick to know.
Anytime you have some extra fabric on one side, if you put that extra fabric on the
bottom those presser foots draw more fabric in so it will, it will just ease that for
you, so that you don’t have, so that you line up.
Oh and look at that, perfect!
Alright, so here’s what we’ve got, our perfect little line up blocks.
And you can see how they’re going to go together this way and this way.
Now mine are set out in a row of, I have 12 across by 13 down.
So, it just lines up really easily.
But when you go to lay out your squares, one of the hardest things for me has always been
balancing the color.
You know we’re given this charm pack.
Somebody else designs it, puts it all together.
It has a pretty even smattering of lights and darks in it and it just can, you just
want to make sure that all those lights and darks are evenly distributed.
So there’s some things you can do for that.
One of the things I do is I get up on chair so I’m away from it and I squinch my eyes
really tight like this.
So I can just see little bits of light and color coming through and I’m able to see
if I have a lot of dark in one place or a lot of light.
The other thing you can do is you can take a picture with your phone and sometimes that
helps.
Years ago I robbed our, we have the game Passwords, and I robbed the little piece of red cellophane
out of the Passwords game and I used to use that to look through because red makes everything
gray.
Well the other day, I got these glasses from Jolene from So Red Glasses.
Oh my gosh!
What a perfect idea!
So I take a look at the quilt.
The red lens makes everything go gray and you can just tell right away where the lights
and darks are and it enables you to be able to lay out your quilt very easily without,
you know, without having a whole clump of darks or a whole clump of lights.
You can just see right away where all the lights and darks are.
So that’s just a really good, helpful tip for laying them out.
So we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the “Lattice Quilt” block from the Missouri
Star Quilt Company.