I'm making this quilt totally off the top of my head and have run into an problem. As you can see in the attached picture, the second block - the rail fence pattern - is smaller than the first block, which is the size it is because I want to highlight the sunflowers. It is rectangular. From the picture, you can tell I need to add 3" to the sides and 1" to the bottom. What is the best way to do this? I think that I should make the rail fence pieces larger (they are 1" finished), but I don't know how to figure out how much larger to make them. Anybody?

What is the finished size of the larger block and what is the width of the brown strips?

The large block is 17x15, and the black strips (color isn't the greatest :) obviously) are 1" finished. All the strips are 1" finished - I cut them 1 1/2". I'm not against cutting larger strips, if that would help, just not sure how to go about it.

Okay, just give me a few minutes to figure it out...

Do the rail fences have the black strip all around them or just top and bottom? And does the 15 x 17 include the black strip on the larger blocks?

They can, but not necessarily. I'm using the black more as a sashing, I suppose. Oh, yes, the 15x17 blocks includes the black border.

Remember, your blue and white checked fabric is deceiving. You may be ok!!!!

I eliminated the 1" black border all around the rail fence to come up with a block that's 13" x 15". The problem with this is that rail fence is designed as a square block. You can still do it as a rectangle, but the strip width is different on the horizontal and vertical rails. I've attached a JPG of the block at that size with rotary cutting measurements. I think if I was doing it I'd stick with a square rail fence at 13" x 13" and then add a one inch strip top and bottom (besides the black) to make it 13" x 15". Let me know if you want that measurement.

Here it is as a 13" x 13" square:

Thank you so very much! I'll let you know if this what it ends up! At this point, I really have no idea what the final result will be! This will, however, get printed out and used at one point or another, trust me!