Rainbow Lattice Tutorial by Sue Preece Sue’s Quilty Bits & Bobs (http://quiltybitsandbobs.blogspot.com.au/)

Finished Quilt Size – 60” x 60” Block size 6.5” x 6.5” (6”x6” finished size)

Fabric Requirements: 2.5 metres x Black Solid (includes 0.5 metre for binding) 2 metres x Grey Patterned fabric 100 tone on tone 2.5” squares in rainbow of colours for block centres (approximately 50cm all together). I used charm squares and cut them down into 2.5” squares.

Cutting Instructions: Unless otherwise specified all cuts are made across the width of fabric (WOF). From the solid black cut 100 6.5” x 2.5” strips and 200 2.5”x 2.5” squares. To do this cut 30 2.5” strips WOF and then cross cut 16 of the 2.5” strips into six 6.5” strips, and one of the strips into four 6.5” strips for a total of 100 strips. Then cut the remaining 13 strips into 2.5” square pieces. You won’t need all of the last strip and might like to use the leftover pieces for the binding! Repeat the process for the grey fabric.

Binding I also cut seven 2.5” strips for binding from the black solid but if you use the leftover strips from cutting the strips and squares above you should only need six 2.5” strips.

Block Construction: Each block needs: One 2.5”x 2.5” coloured fabric square One 6.5” x 2.5” black solid strip One 6.5” x 2.5” grey strip Two 2.5” x 2.5” black square Two 2.5” x 2.5” grey square Centre strip of block. Join a 2.5”x2.5” black square to one side of a coloured 2.5” square. Press seam towards the coloured piece. Join a 2.5” x 2.5” grey square to opposite side of the coloured square. Press seam towards the coloured piece. Set aside.

Check that your strip measures 6.5” long and trim if necessary.

You might want to chain piece this step for all the remaining 99 coloured squares until you end up with 100 lovely coloured strips. Aren’t they pretty?!

Top and bottom strips Mark remaining black and grey squares with a diagonal line as shown. I used pencil on the grey and a white erasable marker on the black.

Lay out a black strip horizontally and place a grey square on the right hand end with the diagonal line marked running from top right to bottom left of the square. The line was a bit hard to see so I’ve highlighted it with an orange line to make it clearer. Line up edges of fabric.

Stitch along the diagonal line (sorry the photo is a little fuzzy!)

If you want to be all thrifty you can do the next step. As this corner will be cut off, instead of wasting the two pieces you can sew a second line half an inch to the right of the previous stitching as shown below.

Cut between the two lines:

Press the seam on the strip outwards to the corner and press the little leftover half square triangle to the dark side and set aside for another project. Check that your strip still measures 6.5” long.

Of course if you prefer you can skip the second line of stitching and just cut off the leftover corners but look at all the cute little half square triangles I ended up with from my quilt by using this method. They are 1.75” square. My plan is to make them into a cushion to co-ordinate with the quilt.

Repeat the above method with the remaining grey strip and black square.

So now your two strips should look like this:

At this point I again suggest chain piecing these elements and make up all the strips for your blocks at once if you can.

Now to join all the elements into your blocks. Lay out your three strips as shown below and stitch the strips together.

Here is your finished block (Sorry about the colour change of the block there, I must have forgotten to take a photo of the red block!). Square up the block to 6.5” square if necessary.

So now you have all your blocks put together its time to play with the layout.

If you want to use the same layout as my quilt, go for it. I played around quite a while with making sure I had the right colours in the right place (nothing like crawling around on the lounge room floor for hours annoying the other half!).

You might, however, want to try a different layout, depending on the fabrics you use for your centres. Here are some of the options I considered at the time. One of them might spark your imagination! The first one was having the black pieces together to form solid lines of black and grey:

You can see the difference between the two layouts. I even toyed with the idea of using half and half!

This is actually the design I had in my head before I started making the quilt but once I saw it laid out I didn’t like it as much. I felt it took some of the emphasis off the rainbow element. I still like the layout though.

I don’t have a photo of it but you could also use a zig zag type layout rather than the diamond shape. The choice is yours, although you might find you need more blocks for different layouts. Something to bear in mind. Once you found your layout, join your blocks together making sure to make your seams. For personal preference I like to start by joining pairs and then form two pairs into a square of four blocks and then check again to make sure things are square. From there I usually join pairs of fours into strips. You may have your own method but just remember to check your seams match nicely as you go.

So then we have the quilt top all finished.

As far as quilting goes, I chose to stitch in the ditch between all the blocks in grey and then quilted each square only along the diagonal seam, around the coloured square and in the grey section leaving the black side unquilted. I matched the colour of the thread to the colour of the centre square.

Here are some close ups, but it’s quite hard to see.

This one is a little easier to see I think:

I hope you enjoy making this quilt and I’d love to see what your quilt looks like. Feel free to contact me at [email protected] with any queries you might have about the quilt or to share a photo of yours!

Happy quilting!

Sue Preece Sue’s Quilty Bits & Bobs