Hi everybody, it’s Jenny from the MSQC. And I’ve got a fun project for you today. We’re calling this On the Fence because it’s based on the old traditional block, the Fence Rail block. It’s really quick and easy to make and I can’t wait to show you how to do it. So to make this quilt what you’re going to need is one roll of 2 ½ inch strips. And we have used Chloe by Maywood Studios. And it’s a fun line. It has a bit of a Christmas look to it. But it’s actually these beautiful summer geraniums. And so it’s really cute. You’re also going to need a yard and a quarter, let me make sure on that. Yep a yard and a ¼ of this contrasting fabric. And it’s actually made up of 2 ½ inch strips. So if you have 2 ½ strips in the color that you want, that’s an easy way to go. For the outer border we’re going to need a yard and a ¼. And that’s a nice big six inch border and we used that stripe. Now for the background we used 4 ½ yards. And we also put the stripe on the back and did vertical seams. So this is just so easy. Such a fun quilt to make. It actually makes a quilt that is 71 by 71 so it’s square or we made it square. I guess you can do whatever you want.

But what we’re going to do is we’re going to sew four strips together. And I’ve already done that here but let’s take a look at them. We’ve got four strips. And you know just mix them up, mix them up. You know you just don’t want two of the same together. We pressed our seams going the same direction. And then however tall this is that’s how wide we’re going to cut it. So it should be about 8 ½ and I’m going to check that right now to see. But if it’s not just measure, you know, that depends on your seam allowance. So measure how tall they are. And then that’s how wide we’re going to cut it. So the first thing I’m going to cut off right here is these selvedge edges right here. And I’m going to just cut that off like this. Alright clean up that whole mess. And now I’m going to measure how tall this is. And this is 8 ½. So I’m going to come over 8 ½ one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and a half just like this. And you can see I folded my strips in half and that way I get, you know, I get two blocks every time I cut. And so we’re going to do that again right here. And I’m just going to go ahead and cut the whole strips because the fun in this is the secondary block which is this little four patch block and we get that from the scraps. So let me go ahead and we’re going to line this up here. Count over 8 ½ one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and a half. And you should get four blocks from each strip set. You’re going to do this, you’re going to sew all of your whole strips together, all of them. You’ll probably get about ten strip sets. And so you get four of these blocks and you set those aside over here. And then you have this piece left right here. And with this piece it’s not quite big enough. So we’re going to cut this into 2 ½ inch strips just like this. And we’re going to do that to the whole thing. One more set here. There we go. Alrighty.

Alright, so now we’re going to set these aside. And essentially your first block is done. This is your first block. And, and you can see it in the quilt behind me. And this is your second block. So to make that second block what we’re going to do is we’re going to take one of these that has the four. And we’re going to carefully just release these, these stitches on here. And they should come out really easy. You ought to be able to just kind of give it a tug. And then take that apart. You can use a seam ripper if you want. I just gave it a tug and it worked. Because what we’re going to do now is we’re going to make a four patch. So we’re going to put two of those together. We’re going to lay them right sides together. And we’re going to sew the four patch together just sew a quarter of an inch right down the side. You want to kind of put them so you mix up your lights and darks. And let me make sure this is going on there right. There we go. Alright so now what I’m doing is I’m sewing along and I’m lining up those two middle seams. I can feel them nesting, just like that. And my four patch is ready to go. I’m going to press it. So let’s, let’s just set the seam on here. And then we’re going to open it up. And give it a press. Alright.

So now we’ve made our four patch which is the center of this block. And, and we’re going to put blocks, we’re going to put strips on all four sides. So these two strips right here, this should measure 4 ½ and it does. And I have two strips cut already that are 4 ½ and once those get sewn you’ll put two 8 ½ inch strips on this side like this. So let’s sew these together. I’m going to sew the two dark strips on either side like this. And then one more side over here. And usually, when I was making this quilt what I did was I didn’t actually cut all my little pieces to fit. I took one strip and I put my block along, all my blocks along the side and sewed a whole bunch of them, chain pieced them right down the side and then trimmed them off and then started on the other side. So that’s a faster way to do it. You know I’m showing you this way because this is, I’m only working with one block here. But when I was doing my whole quilt we just chain pieced the whole thing. Alright. And then one more over here. And this one is just the straight flat piece so it doesn’t have to line up with anything. You’re not matching any seams. We’re going to press that open. Alright here we go, roll these back.

So once you get your four patch block done you are ready to go, you are ready to set this together. And there’s a couple of ways we can do that. So let’s go look at the blocks in the quilt. So this row right here, if you put it together horizontally like this you can see you have your four patch block and your strips, four patch and strips. And they’re all going the same direction. The next row is just like a normal fence rail. So you’ve got one going horizontally or vertically and horizontally, vertically, horizontally just like that. Up, down, up, down, up, down. Now you can also look at this and put this together another way. And this depends on how your brain works. So watch how, watch this to see if this is a better way for you. This whole column right here is all strips that are going exactly the same direction. Do you see? And then this first column, the strips are all going up and down. So it’s four patch, strips, four patch, strips, four patch, strips. So you actually could assemble this a couple of different ways. And all of us think differently. So just choose the one that works well for you.

But also you’ll notice that we only needed 16 of these four patches for these blocks right here. So we have a bunch left of these 2 ½ inch strips, these little 2 ½ inch strips over here. So I took some of those, you guys know I just can’t do the waste. So I took some of those and I sewed them together. I took my four and added three more and made this cute little runner. Just as a little secondary project. So I took my little strips and sewed them and put a little black strip in between every one. And just made a darling little runner with the leftovers. So it’s just fun to see what else you can do just another little bonus project to do so you don’t have any waste. And we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on On the Fence quilt from the MSQC.