Sunday, July 14, 2019

Fourth Rail Kicked Back to Blockmaker


When last we talked, the Blockmaker had declared that she was finished making the blocks for Fourth Rail and had passed the finished blocks to the Block Put-together-er and checked off the completion of all the blocks.  The UFOs and the WIPs rejoiced and had a celebration.

The Block Put-Together was supposed to try out different layouts to find the best one for this set of blocks. She was supposed to try the traditional fence rail with the larger number of blocks, a courthouse square, multiple courthouse squares, copy the layout of the last fence rail, etc.  She even took a book with pictures of different layouts of fence rails so she could try them all.  Being the lazy sort, however, she tried one layout with a little less than half the blocks. She wasn't sure about the layout but when she took the picture, she declared that it was good. She also decided that these blocks did not make good turns and required a different block be made for the corners.  Probably HSTs.

Maybe if all the rails faced with the dark rail inward instead of outward, like the center, the additional blocks wouldn't be necessary.


When asked for more choices and more pictures, she simply referred to the blog.  The rest of the pictures are ones you have seen already, but are put here for your convenience. This picture shows the multiple courthouse square/oval idea. It would also need corner blocks. Maybe more fence rails with a dark corner triangle. Or maybe they would be okay as they are with a slight gap in the corners.


This one looks like multiple rows of fences and does not need additional blocks.


 Here's the traditional fence rail which also would not require additional blocks. I already have a rail fence quilt with this layout, although it does not have a specific dark rail, but this is more traditional than the others, and I like the others better.


15 Minutes to Stitch: Week 28

This week, I pieced the rail fence blocks and the ATC holder. I also cut more pieces for the ATC holder today.  I thought I had pressed all the corner triangles, but I didn't.  These little pieces were hard to press in December, and would be even harder in the heat of the summer.  I may cut all the rest of the pieces and save it for the fall or winter for making more corner triangles. I will try to make more progress on it before I move to the next quilt.

15 Minute sessions of stitching this month: 7 out of 7
15 Minute sessions of stitching this year: 151 out of 195 sessions

Success rate is still 77%.

Linked with:
15 Minutes to Stitch
Oh Scrap !
Moving It Forward

6 comments:

Allie said...

LOVE these blocks!!!!!

Fiona said...

Great blocks... and I love that you have had to add bits to some of the rails to get them the rights size - it adds so much interest...
Hugz

Robin said...

Who knew there were so many ways to do a rail fence layout? I kind of like the first picture the best, but it's not up to me.

Susie H said...

I like the first & last pictures best. They seem to be pretty balanced to me. But then again, that is an opinion from a totally unbalanced person! Lol! Good luck trying to figure it out for YOU!

Kate said...

I like the third version of your Fourth Rail. I always struggle with layouts, which is one reason it takes me forever to finish off sampler quilts. Congrats on finding time to stitch every day last week. Hopefully this week is on track for the same. Thank you for linking up this week.

Tanya said...

At a first quick look at your first picture I thought you were making a log cabin variation in a spiral (it wasn't a spiral but it sort of looked like one.) How much fun to play with your blocks!