Robert Kaufman has published two free quilt patterns called Lattice, and they are not the same quilt. One is a baby quilt made from an ombre print. The other is a bed quilt with 1575 pieces that needs 420 paper foundations. If you came looking for a lattice quilt pattern and found one of them, it is worth knowing the other exists.
Both are free, both are still on the Robert Kaufman site, and this page has the download link for each.
The two Lattice patterns side by side
- Lattice, 2014: 36" x 44", Confident Beginner, one ombre print plus white, strip pieced, blocks on point
- Lattice, 2016: 60" x 84", Experienced Intermediate, ten solids, foundation paper pieced, 35 blocks
Download the 2016 Lattice quilt pattern PDF, 60" x 84"
The 2016 Lattice quilt pattern, counted
This is the ambitious one. Thirty five blocks at 12 1/2 inches, set seven rows of five with no sashing and no borders. Five blocks at 12 inches finished is 60, seven is 84, and the quilt measures 60" x 84".
Thirty five is an odd number, which is what makes the layout work. The blocks alternate like a checkerboard, and on an odd grid that gives eighteen of one block and seventeen of the other, which is exactly what the pattern asks you to make.
The two block types are the same construction in two colorways. The A blocks run through Creamsicle, Salmon and Ice Peach with a Seafoam cross at the center. The B blocks run through White, Raffia and Sand with a Cream cross. Alternate them and the warm and the neutral blocks sit in a checkerboard, while the diagonal bands run on through without a break.
Where the 1575 pieces are
Each block is a nine patch of unequal grid, 5 inches, 2 inches, 5 inches in both directions. Four cross units at the corners, four bars down the sides, one small square at the center. Five and a half plus two and a half plus five and a half, less two seams, is twelve and a half.
The cross unit is where the work is. It is two Template 1 triangles and one Template 2 hexagon, paper pieced separately and then joined into a 5 1/2 inch square where two colored bands cross in an X on a white ground. With 1575 pieces landing on that white, the thread shows: we keep cotton quilting thread in white, off white and cream for exactly this.
- 280 Template 1 units, three pieces each, giving 840
- 140 Template 2 units, three pieces each, giving 420
- 140 bar units, two pieces each, giving 280
- 35 center squares
That comes to 1575, and adding the cutting list fabric by fabric gives the same number. Nothing is left over and nothing is short.
It is the largest piece count of any free pattern we have written up. For scale, the quilts that come closest are Fractured Fragments at 1260 and Foundry at 1110.
Why it has to be paper
Fabric F, the white, is cut as 280 squares of 2 1/2 inches, each cut once on the diagonal. That is 560 triangles, every one of them with a bias edge on its long side, and two of them go into every Template 1 unit.
A bias edge stretches if you look at it unkindly. Sewn against a printed line on paper it cannot, because the paper holds the shape while the seam goes in. That is the whole argument for foundation piecing on a quilt like this, and our complete guide to foundation paper piecing goes through the method from paper weight to when the paper comes off.
The templates are the other commitment. Seventy sheets printed four up gives the 280 Template 1 copies, forty seven sheets printed three up gives the 140 Template 2 copies. 117 sheets of paper before a single seam. All of it has to come back out once the units are joined, which is the one job a pair of angled sewing tweezers does better than fingernails.
Print one page first and measure the 1 inch test square the pattern provides. If it is not an inch, no setting further on will rescue it. Monica Poole of Pattern Poole TV makes the same point in our write up of her introduction to foundation paper piecing: adjust the printer until the template measures what it says, and keep the steam off the iron, because steam softens paper and distorts the lines you are sewing to. Leanne of Twin Rock Quilting covers the trimming side in her square in a square walkthrough.
Ten Kona solids, a 2 yard cut of the white and a 5 1/2 yard backing. Our guide to quilt backing works through whether to piece that or use a single wide cut, which on a 60 by 84 quilt saves about three yards. We keep wide quilt backing fabric for the version without the seam.
Download the 2014 Lattice quilt pattern PDF, 36" x 44"
The 2014 Lattice quilt pattern, and the gradient that does the work
The older Lattice is a different idea entirely. It is a baby quilt, 36" x 44", and it is built from a single ombre print: Pointillist Palette by Lunn Studios, which shifts from deep purple through red and orange to yellow across the width of the fabric.
The pattern turns that shift into the design. You cut fourteen strips across the width, number them 1 to 14 with number 1 as the darkest, and keep them in order for the rest of the make. Pair them up into nine strip sets with a white strip between, cut each set every 3 inches, and the gradient survives into the blocks. Two of those rectangles with a white strip between them makes a block, four blocks per set, thirty six blocks in nine shades.
Placed on point, with white between every block, the white becomes the lattice and the blocks become diamonds that go from dark at one end of the quilt to light at the other. The pattern says it in one line that is easy to skim past: arrange the rectangles so the color gradation matches. If you lose the order of the strips, you lose the quilt.
One thing to fix before you cut
The nine strip sets each need a white strip 1 1/2 inches by 25 inches running down the middle. The cutting list never asks you to cut them. It gives you sixty seven white strips at 1 1/2 by 6 1/2 inches, which are the ones that go between the rectangles and between the blocks, and nothing at 25 inches.
The diagram makes it harder rather than easier, because it labels those long strips as Fabric A when the drawing shows them white and Fabric A is the print. Fabric B is the white.
So before you start: cut nine white strips at 1 1/2 inches by 25 inches for the strip sets, on top of the sixty seven the list gives you. There is room for them in the roll up.
Which Lattice quilt pattern to make
They are not competing with each other. They want different things from you.
The 2014 one is an evening of cutting and a weekend of sewing, and the quilt looks like more than the effort because the fabric is doing the clever part. It wants care with order rather than care with points. If you have never worked with an ombre print, it is a good first one, because the pattern tells you exactly how to keep the sequence.
The 2016 one is a project. There is no triangle to cut and no point to match in the ordinary sense, but there are 117 sheets to print, 420 foundations to piece, and 1575 pieces to keep track of. What you get for that is a quilt where every one of those diagonal bands meets its neighbor cleanly, which is a thing that is genuinely hard to do any other way.
If you are weighing the sizes rather than the methods, our quilt size chart will settle which bed the 60 by 84 actually covers.
Both are free to download from Robert Kaufman at the links above, and there are several hundred more in our collection of free quilt patterns.
