The lattice in this quilt is not pieced. It appears when you turn every other block upside down.
Dogwood is a free quilt pattern that finishes at 58 1/2 by 75 inches, made from one unit repeated seventy-eight times. Two white squares meet and read as a tall window. Two bands of print meet and read as a bar across it. Neither of those shapes exists in the block you sew. You make them by choosing which way up each one goes.
It was designed by Marbelia Fernandes, The Fabric Hut Co-Founder, and this version is made in Blossom Breeze, forty prints in pinks, aquas, teals and navy, with White Supreme squares to separate them.
Pattern details
- Pattern name: Dogwood
- Designer: Marbelia Fernandes, The Fabric Hut Co-Founder
- Finished size: 58 1/2" x 75"
- Size category: Throw
- Difficulty: Beginner
- Block: Strip and charm unit, 12 1/2" x 4 1/2" finished, 78 of them set 13 across and 6 down
- Technique: Strip piecing, chain piecing, one cut
- Fabric: Blossom Breeze mini strips and White Supreme 5" squares
- Price: Free to print, use and teach from
Download the Dogwood quilt pattern
Eleven pages, free to print, use and teach from. Fabric list, the one cut, the unit, the rows, the layout, the binding and five sizes.
Download the free Dogwood quilt pattern PDF
Everything you need to make this quilt
Blossom Breeze + White Supreme Bundle 284pcs
200 Precut Fabric Strips 2.5" x 10" + 84 Squares 5"
Where the lattice comes from
Four mini strips sewn along their long edges make a strip set of 8 1/2 by 10 inches. Cut it in half and you have two identical pieces. A white 5 inch square on the short end of each one finishes the unit at 12 1/2 by 4 1/2 inches.
Dogwood stands that unit upright and alternates it in both directions, like a checkerboard. Along a row, one unit carries its white square at the bottom and the next at the top. On the row below, every unit is the opposite of the one above it.
So the white squares meet each other in pairs, and the bands of print meet each other in pairs, and the two of them cross the quilt in a grid that nothing in the block predicts. It is the cheapest trick in quilting and the one that gives the most back.
What you need
Five packs of mini strips, 2 1/2 by 10 inches, forty to a pack. The top takes 156. Two packs of 5 inch white charm squares, 42 to a pack, and the top takes 78.
The binding comes out of those same five packs: 38 strips after the top is counted out, with 6 left over. All of it scrappy, prints from everywhere in the quilt running around the edge.
Backing is 2 3/8 yards of 108 inch wide fabric for 66 1/2 by 83 inches with no seam, and the batting is cut to the same measurement. Our guide to quilt backing covers the alternatives if you would rather piece one.
Using your own fabrics instead? The squares have to be far lighter or far darker than the prints. If the prints and the background sit too close in value the lattice disappears, and the lattice is the whole quilt. Our mini strips and charm squares are where to start.
One cut, made after the sewing
There is a single cut in the pattern, across each strip set, five inches from either end. Nothing is trimmed before it and nothing is trimmed after it.
That puts all of the accuracy into the quarter inch seam. Four strips have to come to 8 1/2 inches across. Sew one set, measure it, and only then sew the other thirty-eight. Our walkthrough of the quarter inch seam is ten minutes well spent if you have not checked yours lately.
Press the strip set seams open, alternate the direction you sew each seam so the set does not bow, and shorten the stitch a little, because the set is going to be cut across.
Chain piece the whole thing
There are 156 strip set seams and 78 white squares to add. Feed them through one behind the other without cutting the thread, then cut the chain apart at the end. Our guide to chain piecing has the method, and on a run this long it is the difference between an afternoon and a weekend.
Build every unit the same way up. The turning happens later, on the design wall.
Laying it out
Put the units up on a wall before anything is joined, and move them until the two halves of each strip set are far apart and no two matching prints touch along a row or across to the row below. Then photograph it. A unit turned the wrong way costs a second to fix on the wall and an evening to unpick afterward.
The rest of the family
Dogwood shares its unit with six other quilts. Alder turns whole rows instead of single units and is the gentlest of them. Aspen lines everything up into bands. Blackthorn staggers them like brickwork.
More of them live in our free quilt patterns.
P.S. If the lattice looks faint on the wall, the problem is almost never the piecing. It is two prints sitting next to each other with nothing between them in value. Move one.
