Try this simple system for making a lovely blend of fabrics! You will need a jelly roll that already appears to smoothly blend from one colorway to the next, for the most part. Often these rolls are already arranged pretty smoothly, but sometimes will need a bit of a tweak to make the progression more perfect. Designers often create lines of fabric with “blenders” in mind between each of the color stories. These designs will be the bridges between background colors. In the case of batik strip packs, they often include sets that have bits of color in both families.

For example: orange, orange with a bit of blue, blue with a lot of orange, blue with a little orange, blue.

The Rail Fence quilt block is a perfect beginner block for all quilting levels, as it does not depend on accuracy to the 1/4″ seam. As long as you sew consistent width seams, you can easily make this quilt.

I have made this simple block a bit more elegant, by using skinny logs. These are 3/4″ wide…but sewn so cleverly you will not torture yourself with cutting 1.25″ strips at all.

A single strip pack of 40 fabrics generally has two identical strips of each color. So there are usually 20 prints. Some rare and wonderful strip sets will have 40 unique fabrics. Alternatively, some fabric lines are smaller than 20 skus (colors). To make a strip pack of 40, the manufacturer will put duplicates of 3 or even 4 strips of certain prints. This kind of strip roll is less ideal to work with. I recomend looking for one of the first two.

A single jelly roll with 3-5″ final border will be a large baby quilt size…around 48″ x 58″

For a large baby size quilt your supplies include : one fairly color blended jelly roll of 40 unique or 20 (doubled) prints. Up to 1 yard of border print fabric, and backing fabric for an approximate 48 x 58″ project, however the size can vary a lot…so I recommend waiting on buying backing.

Before you begin…ask yourself if you want a pieced binding made of these same jelly roll scraps. If you do, you will cut those off first. If you would rather end up with more pieced blocks, then buy 1/2 yard of binding fabric too. Cut off 8″ from every single strip if you would like pieced binding.

Removing 8″ from each strip will yield 300 finished inches of binding with straight (not mitered) seams. Keep this number in mind as you lay out the blocks and add borders.

This will be the difference of 200 blocks (jelly roll pieced binding) or 240 blocks (separate binding). Each block is a finished 3″ square. Or, consider buying two jelly rolls and creating 480 3″ blocks. Three rolls yields 720 blocks.

You can certainly simply buy 20-40 fabrics in a progression you enjoy and cut your own strips, or work from a stash.

Lets Sew!

You can arrange as you sew, or if that makes you nervous, create your strip pairs in advance. Sew the first top strip to the next in the stack. If the next available strip after this step is DUPLICATES, then skip one strip and sew it to the next DIFFERENT fabric. By doing this no two strip sets will be identical.

The exception to this is the last 4 strips. If you had 20 fabrics to start, these last two strips will be the same as each other. You can either leave it, or, mix them up a bit more with the previous strip set.

As seen in the image, sew BOTH sides of each strip set. I recommend chain piecing and just flying through one side of all the strip sets as fast as your machine will hum and you can maintain a consistent seam. Then, buzz down the other side by flipping all the strips.

Next, press each set to remove any small distortion and flatten it nicely.

Then, cut each set down the long side in half. This means 1.25″ from one side. Stack these together, or pin so they don’t get seperated.

Re attach the two cut strips, but reverse the color so the stripe colors alternate.

Press your strip set to one side. If you sewed the unicorn scant 1/4″ seam…your strip set will be 3.5″ wide. If it is not, DO NOT worry about it.

Cross cut your units into whatever the width of your strip set is. This is your personal sewing ability and it is FINE.

Mine generally need to be cross cut at 3 3/8″ because i just cant be fussed over the unicorn scant 1/4″ for a casual quilt.

Keep all your piles of blocks together, and if you mixed up the colorwash effect, take the time now to rearrange them in order.

The simplest arrangement is corner to corner. Work in diagonal rows from one pile to the next. Periodically hop-scotch a color to the next group to really mix up dominant fabrics. It is easy to let them “tile” and end up with too many of the same set looking like a dominant “stamp”. you can also rotate blocks so the color pattern also flips.

Suggested layouts for 200 blocks are 13 x 15 blocks or a square 14 x 14 blocks. 220 block quilts can be 15 x 14 or 13 x 16, there will be a few leftovers to play with.

Sew these together in rows, alternating pressing directions of seams between rows for better nesting.

Borders

Add borders to the edges.  I recommend cutting border strips between 3.5 and 5.5 inches wide. For larger quilts, you will need to seam 2 cut strips together.  Measure the width of your finished quilt in 3 places.  Cut the length of border to match the average of these measurements and pin it securely.  Sew both left and right sides in this fashion.

Repeat the process of measuring the top and bottom and finding the average.  Cut border fabric to match this measurement.

Layer with batting and backing and quilt as desired. An edge to edge design in the rail fence area with a different border treatment will look lovely.  Bind with the straight joined trimmed scraps from the first step, or with a coordinate.

I hope you enjoy this fun project!!