To start this new series, UFO of the Week, I’m picking the one I’ve been working on lately. Yep, it’s all quilted and waiting for binding. 
I was inspired to make a lattice quilt after seeing a picture of one somewhere, probably flickr. It’s a simple concept – sashing with posts around print squares instead of pieced blocks. And I had some autumn-themed 6 inch squares hanging about begging to be used, so I jumped in. I didn’t pre-plan any of it, just decided what size sashing to use, cut a bunch of fabric, and started sewing.
After I had squares with sashing sewn to one side I put them up on my design wall and worked out a layout that used all my blocks. 
I didn’t realize until I went to put the final rows together that I should have had one less diagonal row in the middle. Not a really big deal, but I did have to sew part of one seam, then several other seams, before coming back to finish the first seam. 
The alternative would have been to trim the outside posts, as I did to the sashing in this QAYG quilt: 
but I wanted the sashing to float on the dark background. After all, the sashing is supposed to be the focal point in this style of quilt. It worked, but not as simply as I would have liked.
And the end result was a bit long for its width. As you can see in the top image above, I had to add a strip to each side before the outer border to make the quilt end up twin sized.
Speaking of twin, this one was a pain in the patootie to quilt. My 17 year-old Pfaff has a measly 7 inch throat and I used poly batting. I’d forgotten how lofty most poly batting is, I used to use one of the thin ones before I switched to cotton. It took a lot of squishing to get to the center of the quilt. I swear, from now on, anything bigger than crib is going to be quilted in sections, or rows or blocks, then put together.
Somewhere in a plastic shoebox reside a couple more (much smaller) lattice projects I started from the scraps from this one, hence the name for this one – Big Lattice.
I love the fall colors. I’ve been using polyester batting too, and would like to find something with less bulk for fitting through the machine. Do you find that cotton usually shrinks? Thanks!
I find cotton (I use needle-punch usually) shrinks a little bit, just enough to help hide minor imperfections in my quilting (it won’t hide the big ones) and give the quilt a softer, cuddlier feel. I like it. But cotton isn’t necessarily less bulky. I used to use Hobbs Poly-down Lite which is a thin poly and does stuff better into the machine. I’ve heard wool squishes down well but have not tried it due to cost.
Great work!