Simple Rail Fence Quilt using 2 1/2 inch STRIPS! 3rd in a series to use up your strip stash!

hi Quilters this is the third video in a series to show you ideas to use up two and a half inch strips I'm using my leftovers from other projects I decided I needed to sort the strips into color families to help me figure out some of the quilts to make so the pile will look worse before it looks better this bucket has multi-color strips on a black background this bucket is all of the Christmas prints I had all the different colors and styles the next bucket has my Halloween prints in it plus black orange yellow and purple I also started a bucket for the softer pastel colors pink peach blue and green hot Pink's got their own pile I seem to have a lot of those and I also have a lot of Browns all different shades of brown sometimes it was hard to know which bucket to put it in and so a lot of the brights and Stripes got put into this bucket I also had a lot of green Fabrics so all different shades of green mostly the Forest Greens that were in this bucket and then a bucket with red white and blue patriotic fabrics and lastly I made a pile that had background Fabric and purple and yellow because I saw it as a request on one of the comments for a color combo so here it is the quilt we're making today is a simple rail fence with three rails the background color will always be the center Rail and then we'll need some that are yellow with yellow some that are yellow with purple and some that are purple with purple you can use any length of strip as long as it's longer than six and a half inches I graphed it out so I could have a pattern to follow I'm going to need 140 blocks 70 that are two color blocks purple and yellow 35 that are all yellow and 35 that are all purple so I only need three different blocks the all yellow the purple and yellow combination blocks and then the all purple blocks well it's time to use up some of these strips so let's get started sewing make sure you're using quarter inch seam allowances this is the kind of sewing that I love it's fun and easy it's just a matter of sewing the strip sets together I mix and match the Fabrics to get different combinations and I just keep sending them through the machine and cutting them off the back side until I've sewn through a whole pile of strips I used all the longest strips first and then when I got to the shorter strips I sometimes would sew them together to get pieces long enough to use the formula for this quilt is basically for every two strip sets of the two color combination you need one each of the single color combinations so if you have purple and yellow like I have for every two of those that I make I need to make one that's all yellow and one that's all purple other color combinations that I considered were black and red red and green which would be kind of like a Christmas quilt I thought that would be really pretty and hot pink and black of course you could always do any color combination that you want you could even make this totally Scrappy where every part of the rail is a different color but I wanted to kind of have a pattern show up which is why I just picked two colors plus a background so how many strip sets to sew that is part of the question so I figured out that if I was using full length strips which would be about 40 inches long I will need 12 that are the two color so yellow and purple with the background in the middle I'll need 12 full strip sets of that and then for each of the colors that are one color I'll need six full length strip sets for those so six of the purples and six of the yellows I'm just going to keep sewing strip sets until I run out of fabric and if I end up having leftover blocks for any of these color combinations I'm okay with that because it gives me options when I'm putting the whole quilt top together now that all my strip sets are sewn I need to press I'm going to press away from the center rail so towards the darker Fabrics since there aren't any seams to match up when you're sewing the blocks together you could also press the seams open or press to one side some of the strips like this one were leftover binding strips I like to use Mary Ellen's best press spray on them to help eliminate the crease once pressed all the strip sets should measure six and a half inches wide foreign and of course I can't just make one colorway of the sample to show you I also got the box that had all the red white and blue colors in it and I'm making a red white and blue version to show you so that's been happening in the background I have red and red blue and blue and then the combo red and blue blacks once you're done pressing it is time to trim the blocks down to six and a half inches Square you can just use the six and a half inch ruler and cut each strip set separately at the end you'll end up with little bits that are left over I try to cut the largest possible strip I can off of that one little bit if cutting these one at a time gets to be a little bit tedious one thing that you can do is instead of cutting one at a time you can stack the strip sets on top of each other and then cut multiple layers at once for this I would strongly suggest having a very sharp rotary blade and making sure when you line them up you get them straight across kind of line them up with the lines on the mat I make sure that I can make as many Cuts as possible and I can usually only do about four or five layers when I'm doing it this way and you want to double check every time you cut because if you make one mistake here that will make several mistakes all at once so always double check that you are at the right point on your ruler to cut after I get done cutting I'm going to count the blocks to see if I have enough I sort them into piles of ten and put them together with a safety pin now I know whether or not I need to go back and sew some more strip sets or if I have enough to get the top made once that I've counted my blocks and know that I have enough I can start sewing the rows together as I was cutting the blacks out of the strip sets at the end I would trim down the smaller pieces that were left over into two and a half inch wide sections and then random sections of whatever width I could get out of the last little bit I don't know what I'll make out of them yet but I'm sure I'll think of something I've also been working on my red white and blue version of this quilt I have got my blocks pinned together so I have all the red white and blue ones together all the red and red ones together and all the blue and blue ones together foreign graph to guide me through making each row I'm going to make one row at a time every other rail block is turned 90 degrees so there are no seams to match make all the sets of two across the row and then you'll put the first two sets of two together and the second two sets of two together and so on and so forth just keep feeding them through the machine cut them off the back side and then keep sewing them to each other until you have the entire row done I found it easier to work on one row at a time because if I had to walk away from it at any point and then come back to it it was easier to pick up where I left off but if you can work on multiple rows at the same time go for it as I picked up the blocks to sew them together I tried not to sew like fabric to like fabric I tried to make sure I kind of mixed it up a little bit as I was sewing although occasionally I didn't notice and I had the same two purples together or the same two yellows together and I didn't let it bother me it's best not to overthink these things just keep sewing I have 10 blocks across and 14 rows of 10 blocks so this is the first row done only 13 more to go as you finish sewing the rows if you have a design wall or a big space on the floor lay them out as you complete them to see the patterns start to come together if you're enjoying our series of videos to use up strips that are two and a half inches wide make sure to hit the like button and subscribe so you'll see all of our future ideas thank you foreign once all the rows are sewn it's time to press press all of the horizontal seams toward the vertical blocks you'll want to press all of the rows this way when it is time to sew the rows together all of the corner seams will Nest together to make the sewing easier I usually press the rows in sets of two to make it go a little bit faster now that all the rows are pressed we can start to sew them into sets of two double check as you sew that the pattern is looking the way that it should as you're sewing the rows together the seam should nest to help match the corners you wouldn't have to pin if you didn't want to but I did pin at most of the corners and I would highly recommend it in this video we're showing you a purple and yellow quilt plus a red white and blue version leave a comment below and tell us what color combo you want to try using this pattern thank you once you've sewn all the sets of two it's time to press press to one side or you can press the seam open if you prefer sometimes I wait to the end and press all the rows at once but this time it seemed easier to press as I went along for me I find it easier to press from the wrong side so I can press my seam to one side from the back side first and then I'll flip it over to the front side and make sure that I haven't pressed any creases into the front once the sets of two are pressed it's time to make sets of four and then sets of eight or whatever is left to sew together it will all depend on the size of the project you end up making okay foreign thank you foreign thank you thank you once you have all the rows sewn together and your quilt top is done it's time to give it a final pressing as I'm doing the final pressing I take this opportunity to get all the little threads off of the especially the white area so when I have it quilted those threads don't end up on the back side of the quilt top and you can see them through all the layers so if you have a lint brush it makes a little easier or you can just pick them off as you go I've also been working on my red white and blue version here it is pressed and ready to be quilted I'm going to load them onto my long arm quilting machine and get them finished I used a white thread to quilt the purple and yellow quilt and I used a double Loop design for the Red White and Blue Quilt I used a blue thread and did a stipple in Stars design for the purple and yellow quilt I made a purple binding made with leftover strips that I didn't use in the strip sets so these are all different purples going around the edge of the quilt for the Red White and Blue Quilt I put a blue binding on it I had a lot of leftover blue strips that weren't in the strip sets so they were perfect for binding I'm using my walking foot to attach The Binding to the quilt top once The Binding is attached to the front of the quilt you can either flip it around to the back and hand Stitch it on the back side or you can stay on the front side and flip it around to the back and top Stitch it down from the front catching The Binding underneath on the back side I usually use my binding clips for this part but I couldn't find them and I was in kind of a hurry so today I'm just freewheeling it foreign The Binding on completes this cool top here it is in the purple and yellow colorway I just love the way this turned out and I also finished my red white and blue version my scrap pile doesn't seem to be getting much smaller but I'll keep working at it and we'll have more videos in the future so here's how I put together the big chart for me to follow when I wanted to color in the pattern and see where it was going to go I printed four of these pieces of paper and then I trimmed off one side so I could put it right up next to the first paper and then I'll just use a little bit of glue on a glue stick and glue it together and then on the back side I'm going to add some tape you can use regular Scotch tape or I just use big packing tape to attach my two pieces together I had to use four sheets to make it big enough for the size of quilt that I wanted to make each of these blocks is six inches Square so along the top and along the left side I had written in all the numbers corresponding with the blacks of 6 12 18 24 30 36 and so on so they knew how many blocks I would need to get the size that I wanted to make which was 60 by 84. I was trying to get this to be the right size for a quilts of Valor quilt according to their website for a quilt of Valor quilt the recommended size is 60 inches by 80 inches a minimum of 55 by 65 and a maximum of 72 by 90. so this one fits in perfect because it'll end up being 60 inches by 84 inches but remember that easy formula for a two color quilt using this pattern is that half of the blocks will be two color a quarter of them will be all of one color and that quarter of them will be all of the other colors so if we've got the Red White and Blue version half of the blocks are going to be red and blue together a quarter of them are going to be all red and a quarter of them are going to be all blue so no matter what size quilter is just take the number of blocks that you need divide it in half half are the two color and then the other half are going to be a quarter of one and a quarter of the other I really had fun making this little graph for me to color in I think it was just an excuse to get my colored pencils out and have a little fun you will find a downloadable version of the graph in the files section of our Facebook group called The culted Force friends you can print it at home and color your own version you can use colored pencils or crayons it can also be more than just a two color quilt each of these rows of cascading boxes could be a different color having multiple colors will change the formula a little bit when it goes to figuring out how many strip sets you need from all the different colors but all you have to do is count the blacks and then you'll know how many you need I hope you will play around with this pattern a little bit and have some fun and make some beautiful quilts now my scrap pile isn't looking smaller if anything it actually looks a little bigger now but I think it's a little more manageable we hope you'll remember to hit the like button leave a comment for us share with your quilting friends and subscribe thanks for watching and happy quilting foreign

Channel: The Quilted Forest

Views: 173,841

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Id: -RAtdYxD5kM

Length: 26min 45sec (1605 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 29 2023