Making a Rail Fence Quilt Pattern Using Jelly Roll

Fabric

In order to learn how to make a rail fence quilt pattern using jelly rolls, you first need to know what a jelly roll is. Heather shows an example of one size of jelly roll and explains that they are pre-cut strips of fabric packaged into rolls. You can find jelly rolls in varying sizes containing 20, 30 or even up to 40 strips of fabric. Generally, the strips are all 2½” wide by a width of fabric and are all either matching, coordinating or from the same fabric collection. Heather then explains that it is possible to find a jelly roll that contains strips that are not all cut at exactly 2 ½”, but that to make a rail fence quilt pattern using jelly rolls- it doesn’t really matter how wide the strips are.

Construction

Heather explains that a rail fence quilt pattern is made by first piecing together three strips. She shows how to do this and explains that when making a large quilt, it is quicker and easier to string piece together sets of two strips and then go back and add the third. Once the strips have been pieced together, Heather shows how to accurately press the strips without distorting them. She then shows how to measure the width of the pieced strip and then cut them to that length to create a square.

Once all of the squares have been cut out, you can lay out the rail fence quilt design, which consists of alternating the direction of the rails in each block.