Rail Fence Quilt Pattern Tutorial- 10 Quilt Patterns to Make Today

One of my favorite quick and easy quilts is the Rail Fence Quilt.

I’ll start with a quick tutorial on how to make the Rail Fence block, and then show you a few of the ways you can change it up.  It’s simple to piece together, and then has lots of variations to spice up how it looks.  We’ll call this a Choose Your Own Adventure tutorial.  You can follow the basic steps with just 3 fabrics, or pick and choose from all the variations.

To start with, all of my directions will be for fabric strips that are 2½ inches wide, by 40 inches long.  However, this a rail fence quilt pattern can be made with strips of any size, and I will address that later in the post.  All seams should be sewn ¼ inch and ironed.

Sew 3 strips of varying colors together, making sure to alternate direction when sewing.  Iron the seams to the outside.

You now have a piece that measures 6½ inches tall by 40 inches long.

To make squares, cut your strip set every 6½ inches along the length of the strip set.  Obviously, my diagram is not to scale.  The little zig-zag along the right-hand side indicates that you will continue to make these cuts along the full length of the fabric.

With this size strips, and 3 fabrics per strip set, you should be able to get 6 blocks from each strip set.  Make as many strip sets as you need to have enough blocks for the size of the quilt you want to make.  In this example, the finished block size is 6 inches.  60 blocks, set 10 by 10, would give you a quilt that is 60 inches on each side.  48 blocks, set 6 by 8 would give you a finished quilt 36 inches by 48 inches.  You can do as small or large as you want.

Lay out your blocks, turning every other block 90*, so that your stripes alternate vertical and horizontal.

This is the traditional rail fence quilt pattern, and as you add more blocks, continuing this pattern, leads to a cascading look to the colors.  The traditional Rail Fence quilt uses just 3 fabrics to be used in all strip sets.

And this is the first place you can go off track, on a Choose Your Own Adventure kind of quilt pattern.

Choose Your Own Adventure Path One

You don’t HAVE to lay your blocks out according to the traditional pattern.

Try twisting them in all sorts of directions.  You do still want your blocks to alternate horizontal and vertical stripes, but try twisting one so that blue is on top, instead of gray.  Or gray on the left instead of blue.

Choose Your Adventure Path Two

The second way you can go off on an adventure, is to use more than 3 fabrics.  You can stick with 3 colors, but use a variety of prints for each color.  Or, use as many colors as you want.  Continue to follow the pattern to make strip sets of 3 fabrics, cut into 6½ inch blocks, and see where the adventure takes you!

With these basics in mind, what if you want to choose a different adventure?

Choose Your Adventure Path Three

This first example showed what a Rail Fence looks like with 3 fabrics.  This is what it looks like with 4 fabrics (I only switched up the colors to keep the diagrams from getting confusing— use whichever colors and however many colors you want).

After sewing 4 fabrics together, you have a piece 8½ inches tall by 40 inches long.  When cutting blocks, cut them every 8½ inches so they are square.  Again, the diagram is not to scale, but you can definitely get 4 blocks from each strip set.  If your fabric is closer to 42 or 44 inches wide instead of 40, you can probably even get 5 blocks from each strip set.

This is what your quilt top will start to look like as you lay out the blocks.

For my Rail Fence I used lots and lots of scraps, so there are more than 4 colors, but each block is 8½” square and made of 4 strips.

Choose Your Adventure Path Four

What about 5 fabrics per strip set?  This is a Choose Your Own Adventure, go for it!  With 5 fabrics your strip set will be 10½ inches tall by 40 inches long, so when cutting into blocks, you’ll want to cut every 10 ½ inches.

And the layout of the blocks will look like this.

Choose Your Adventure Path Five

You’ve already got lots of different adventures to choose from, but there is more!

You do not have to cut your strips 2½ inches wide.

Wait, what!?!?

Yes.  True story!

You could do narrower and cut them 2 inches, or even 1½ inches.  You could do wider, and go with 3½ inch cuts or larger.  Whatever width you cut your strips, you will want to measure your strip set, so that you can cut your blocks square.  If your strip set is 5 inches tall, cut your blocks 5 inches wide.  If your strip set is 20 inches tall, cut your blocks 20 inches wide.  You can make any size blocks, just make sure you measure first, then cut your blocks as wide as they are tall.

Choose Your Adventure Path Six

What if you aren’t working with a full selvage to selvage cut of fabric?  Can you do this quilt if your fabric is less than 40 inches wide?  Do you have fat quarters (18 inches by 20 inches) instead?  Will this cut of fabric work for this project?  For sure!

You’ll still sew your strip sets as the tutorial states; you’ll just cut less blocks from each strip set.  Totally still workable.

Choose Your Adventure Path Seven

Now you’ve got all of the info you need to make a Rail Fence Quilt.  But, I’ve still got two more paths for you to choose from.  I know, I know.  You wanted a pattern that told you exactly how much fabric you needed and exactly what to do with it.  I’m sorry, this is a Choose Your Own Adventure.  This is not a Darcy Will Choose For You Adventure.

Check out this finished quilt that is a twist on the Rail Fence.  It was made one block at a time, rather than from strip sets.  The center of each block is actually made of half square triangles!  I believe this pattern is called Split Rail, but I made this quilt a LOOOOOOOONG time ago, so I am not positive about that.

You know how to make half square triangles because you are a loyal Darcy Quilts Reader, and have read and memorized THIS POST with instructions on how to make a half square triangle.

You haven’t?  I’m totally offended!  No, just kidding.

To modify the half square triangle tutorial to work with this Split Rail tutorial, cut your squares 2 7/8 inches, to make a finished 2-inch half square triangle.  Three HSTs sewn together will fit perfectly between 2 pieces that are 2½ by 6½ inches.

{I think remaking this pattern – maybe in a 9 inch block instead of this 6 inch block – has just jumped onto my quilts to make in 2019.  If I do it, I’ll make sure to write a full tutorial so you all can make it too.}

Choose Your Adventure Path Eight

This last twist on the Rail Fence is one I just saw this year.  Now, I haven’t read a pattern on this.  I just saw a photo online.  But, it looks like you can mix and match your Rail Fence blocks from the version with 3 strips and the version with 5 strips.

To make this block, make a strip set with 3 fabrics and a strip set with 5 fabrics.  Cut a 6½ inch piece from BOTH strips sets, and then cut a 10½ piece from BOTH strip sets.  Two of your pieces will be squares, two will be rectangles.

Lay your pieces out like the photo shows and sew together.

Now, my directions say one strip set of 3 and one set of 5.  That won’t lead to much variety in your quilt block, and anyway, one block won’t make a quilt.
You should actually make multiple sets of 3 and multiple sets of 5.  Then you can mix and match as you sew your blocks together, which is what is seen in the diagram.

Now, I know, I’ve made you choose your own adventure and have not told you exactly how to do it.  But, I need some help.

With the last block, which layout to do you like better?  I can’t decide if I like all of the blocks facing the same direction (photo 1) or if I like them twisted and random (photo 2).  What do you think?  Which layout should I choose?