Welcome to Missouri Star Quilt Companyís Beginner Block Series. Today weíre going
to be making a block called a ìfence rail.î There are other names for it, but itís most
commonly known as a fence rail. You make this block with 2Ω inch strips.
Now these strips arenít very coordinated. Theyíre just strips we had in the shop so
we could show you this block. But for coordinating strips, theyíre the
same size as the jelly roll. You can sew them together. These jelly rolls are just marvelous.
Theyíre what you call ìpre-cuts,î and they come in a whole fabric line so that everything
blends and goes together. This is one of my favorites. Itís just so bright and happy.
But anyway, what weíre going to do now is, weíve already cut these four pieces of fabric
into 2Ω inch strips and weíre going to sew them together. I like to keep my dark strip
to the outside or to the inside. It doesnít really matter where but it matters that you
are consistent with it.
Again, we sew these strips together. Weíll sew two together first, and weíre sewing
it on a quarter of an inch seam. When youíre sewing long strips like this itís really
important to keep your quilt balanced that you sew one direction on the first set and
the opposite direction on the second set, and Iíll show you just what I mean.
Alright, now weíre going to press this strip open. Weíll set the seam and then press it.
When youíre doing a row of strips you want all those seams to go in one direction.
Now weíll sew the other strips to it, but what weíre going to do is sew the opposite
direction. So if we finished going this way with the next strip, weíre going to lay it
over here and weíre going to sew it this way. This will keep your quilt from becoming
bowed in the middle.
And thatís nice and pressedÖ
Back at the ironing board to iron our last strip-on. Now I would never use these colors
together, but for this demonstration, it allows you to be able to see well. So now we have
a fence rail. If youíll come with me to the cutting board Iíll show you what to do next.
Now youíre going to lay these out on your cutting board and youíre going to measure
how tall they are. So we put out ruler up here and we see that this is eight inches.
So what weíre going to do then is we are going to measure this eight inches in so that
our blocks are square. Thatís a really important tip.
So hereís our first eight inch block and hereís our second. Now, if we use longer
strips we would be able to do this reallyÖ This strip quilting is very fast and if we
used longer strips you can get five or six strip sets out of sewing it once.
Alright, now we have our two blocks sewn. When you put them together you can do it so
their stripes run this way and then every row will make a design thatís called ìfields
and furrows.î You can lay these all different ways.
And itís just a really easy, fun quilt with these. Now Iíd like to show you some pictures
of some other quilts that you can do with these same patterns with a fun little book
that we have in the shop. Itíll just give you some ideas.
Itís called ìbars of gold.î You can see what theyíve done is sew their strip sets
together and cut them, and put a border in between. And itís just the same thing ñ
you just sew those little strips together. They also call these ìcoin quiltsî if the
strips are a little bit shorter.
Iíd like to show you another one.
This book is full of ideas, but these two really represent the fence rail very well.
Look at this cute little bag: just all of the strips sewn together and it just makes
a darling little bag.
This book we have in the store and itís called Jelly Roll Quilts, and itís by Pam and Nicky
Lintott and itís been a book full of wonderful little ideas.
But basically, now you know how to make a fence rail and you can let your imagination
run wild. Thanks for joining me today on Missouri Star Quilt Companyís Beginning Block series.
Happy quilting!