Hi everybody, it’s Jenny from the Missouri Star Quilt Company. And I’ve got a great project for you today. Take a look at this quilt behind me. Isn’t this fun? This is all based on the Fence Rail block and it’s super easy to make. I can’t wait to show you how to do it. So to make this quilt you’re going to need one jelly roll. And I have used Cozy Up by Cory Yoder for Coriander Quilts. It’s just a darling  little jelly roll. You’re going to need 2 ½ yards of background fabric and we have used this nice gray. You’re going to need 1 ½ yards of sashing and inner border fabric. You’re also going to need for your outer border 1 ¼ yards. And for your backing you will need five yards of vertical seam fabric or 2 ½ yards of a 108 wide. 

So this whole quilt is all based on the Fence Rail block. And that’s basically three strips sewn together. And so we’re using this wonderful 2 ½ inch strip jelly roll from Cory Yoder and it’s just darling. I mean it’s a really pretty line. And so what we did was we chose, because there are some lighter fabrics in here, we chose this light gray to go with it. And so we’re going to take two of our strips off the roll and we’re going to sew them to one gray. Then we’re going to make a strip set that’s just the opposite. So our opposite strip set is here. It’s two grays with one color. And so you’re going to make all of your strips into those sets. And basically you’re just going to put them together, right sides together like this and sew a quarter of an inch all the way down the side. When you get a set of those done you’re going to put these two sets right sides together like this, line them up and sew all the way down the side. So let’s go over to the sewing machine and do that. So it’s helpful on this when you’re sewing these together, if one of the sets is ironed to the inside and one of the sets is ironed to the outside. Let me show you what I mean before I start here. So this set right here is ironed in. This one here is ironed out which means that these are going to naturally want to nest together here which is really what you want to have happen. You want those to just line up and nest together. So now let’s sew a quarter of an inch right down the side on these. So line them up and just kind of let them go. Your seams are very particular to you so yours are going to match. Alright we’re just sewing right down this side. I stop every so often to re-line up. Alright we’re almost to the end here. Then what I’m going to do is I’m going to come around here and I’m going to sew the other side and make sure we’re all still lined up here. Now see right here, see how this is a little bit off. What I’m going to check for right here is to make sure that these two are still lined up and just kind of scooch them over and make sure that those line up. Alright here we go. You want to keep those two edges together. Alrighty. 

Alright so once you get your strip sets sewn together you have made a tube. There’s a nice tube here. And we are going to want to cut these into squares. And you’re going to want to square so however tall they are, that’s how wide you want to cut them. They should cut at 6 ½ inches but you know our seams are all a little different and so whatever yours end up, you just want them to be square. So I’m trimming off my little selvedge edges right there. And I’m going to count over 6 ½ because that’s what mine are. So let’s see here, one, two, three, four, five, six, and a half. And I’m looking to make sure I’m still lined up on that line. And then I’m going to cut 6 ½. And you’re going to do this to your whole strip set. So you’re just going to keep cutting 6 ½ inch squares and you’re just going to stack them over here. Once you get your pieces cut now you’re going to want to go back to the sewing machine and we’re going to sew the sides on this. So let’s sew straight down the sides. We’re completely enclosing this now. And then I’m going to sew down this side just like this. So now you can see on my square it is really sewn all the way around.

So what we’re going to do is we’re going to take our ruler here and we are going to cut it diagonally corner to corner. So just lay your ruler corner to corner like this and we’re going to make this cut and then we’re going to make this cut over here. Alright so once you get these cut you’re going to have these four blocks right here and they are going to be two different blocks. So take a look at this. Here’s one right here. And then here’s the other. So let’s go press these open. Alrighty, so now I’m just going to lay this back right here and press it. You can set your seam and roll it back. So just give them a good press. And then when you come over here you can see very clearly that we have two completely different blocks. Now if you’re playing with these blocks and you’re designing something this really is where the fun starts. It’s really interesting to see what happens when you play with these blocks inside the one big block. 

But what  I did was I went ahead and cut my whole strip up and cut all my blocks and then I put them together in two big blocks. And so we have this one block here like this where it has this dark piece, actually let me use four of these because I have these right here. So just like this when you put this together with this block it’s going to make that X block. Now that is just one way of setting it. That’s what we did for this quilt here. But it’s going to make this X block just like that. And that’s a really cool looking block. So once you get your X block together we are ready to make our other block. And it is completely different and what we’re going to do with this one is we are going to put our blue like this and you can see that it has a print corner and it has a background corner and so we are going to put them like this. And we are going to put our background corners to the center. Then we’re going to bring in our other two that are yellow and we’re going to bring those in from the side like this. And basically it makes what looks like a little spool. 

So what we’re going to do now is we’re going to sew these together. I’m going to start with the X block. And on this block what you want to look at when you sew these together is where these match up, you want to make sure that’s pretty close and so that it just lines up real nice. So we’re going to sew a quarter of an inch right down the side like this. I’m going to do a little bit of a backstitch. And I’m going to make sure this lines up right here. And then I’m going to do my other one and then I’m just going to move it right in under the needle in the direction that it’s going so I can do my chain piecing. Alrighty. Then we’re going to open these up  and we are going to sew these together to make the X, just like that. So right sides together. There’s not a lot to line up on this side. You’re going to line up this little edge right here that the X comes together and make sure your middle seams are going opposite directions. And then line up this over here. Alright, now let’s press this open and see how we did. Alright, that looks pretty good. We’ll add this to our stack of X’s over here. 

And then we’re going to put this block together. And you just want to make sure that it goes together as you laid it out. So we’re going to put this on top of each other right here and this one over here. And we’re going to move these just like that to our sewing machine so that we can also chain piece these. Again make sure your little triangles in the middle meetup. Alrighty and then we’re going to open this up right here. Make sure it’s right. Always check. It’s better to check than to rip. And then we’re going to line this edge up right here. Sew a quarter of an inch right down the side. And I’m looking to see that my little corner pieces line up. And you’ll notice, not all of them are perfect but in the overall quilt it looks pretty good. Alright so now we’re going to press this one. So just like we could play in the first block that we cut, you can also play now that you have these blocks done. So we, you know, you could mix these up and put them together. I mean, you could do rows of them. There’s all kinds of things you could do with these. 

We chose to keep ours together. So let’s look at the quilt. Alright so over here you can see these X’s. We put four of those blocks together. Here’s our whole big block right here. But we did a different one from every line so they’re all different. We scrapped them up. We put four of those together. And when you put the spool blocks together, you’re going to put them together like this and it’s going to make a star. And I think that’s one of my favorite parts about quilting is where you make something and something appears that you weren’t expecting. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to sew four of these blocks together to make our big star block. So let’s go ahead and put these together. So what I’m going to do right here is when you lay them you want to match up your center and make it one color so my color is yellow. And I’m just going to match up and make my center yellow right here. And so you can see when I do that the star legs then pop. The star legs, you know, they’re all blues and they’re two different blues, these are two different yellows but it still reads like one block. So then we’re basically going to put this together like a big four patch. So we’re going to go over here and sew this together. We did the same thing with the X blocks. We just put four of those together and made the X blocks and we’re putting four of the spool blocks together. And that makes your big block and your big block is what you’re going to sash. And we’ll talk about that in just a minute. Alright so now we’re just sewing a quarter of an inch down the side. We’re watching our middle seam. And then we’re going to put these two together so it really is basically like a great big four patch. Alright, now let’s press this. See how we did here. I just love how these look like little spools and you put four of them together and all of a sudden it becomes a star. And for that matter, you know, with this quilt block you could actually make two separate quilts. You could do one of stars and one of X’s. But look how this fits in here like this. Isn’t that cute? And you can see how clearly it makes a star. 

Now when we laid this out we did a lot of different options on this. You know, we tried a lot of things. And because the line is the way it is, you know, it’s a very soft line, everything kind of just kind of melded together. And so we thought if we put a sashing in between these blocks that it would really make them pop. And I think we hit the nail on the head with this one. So what you’re going to do is you’re going to sew your little spool blocks together, make four. And what size this block ends up, that’s the size of the sashing over here. And so you’re going to sew one, two, three, four, of these then you’re going to put one solid row of 2 ½ inch sashing under here. Then come in your X blocks. So we’ve got one, two, three, four of those as well and you just put those together. We did random colors, scrapped it up so that it would just be really fun. And love those little X’s. So we have four across by four down. Once we added the sashings, we added a little 2 ½ inch inner border right out here. And then we added our bigger border right here. And this is a nice six inch border. On the back, take a look at that back. Now because it’s called Spools, Stars, and Stitches, we used this beautiful stitching pattern on the back here for our quilting. And I just think it looks absolutely darling.  It comes together really quick. It’s a fun quilt to make. 

So I decided I wanted to see what this pattern would look like in a two color quilt and so I got some red and white and I actually lost the pattern entirely which is always interesting to me when that happens. So I added the third color, I added blue and I want to show you what happened. So look at the X block here. Isn’t that stunning. I mean it just pops it right off the thing. And then the spool block is also very fun, it’s right here. Isn’t that cool? And so just like that by changing out and using a different fabric, you get a whole different look. So I actually think there’s a whole bunch of quilts in here waiting to happen. We could do one that’s all X’s. We could do one that’s all spool blocks. We could put them together. We can play with the blocks before we put them together. We can also play with these two blocks after we get them together. So if you do this quilt just like we did, with the sashings and the borders and everything, you’ll get a quilt that is 79 by 79. But don’t be afraid to play with this and try some different things. And we hope you enjoyed this tutorial from the Missouri Star Quilt Company.

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