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!

Glad I could help!

After laying the quilt out on my bed with the one rail fence that I have, I love it! Hopefully I can follow your instructions easily enough - it just looks so right!!

And I agree with doing it as a square adding the strips to the top and bottom to make it the right size. I'm going to use the green check to do that, what would the sizes be for that?

I have learned over the years to always KEEP IT SIMPLE. You can KEEP ALL your blocks. Just do a little tweaking ONLY to the outside border which should get you to a 19" x 15" finished size for BOTH blocks. Finished size refers to the size of the block when it has been sewn in the quilt. Unfinished means that the seam allowance are included with the dimension. Hope you understand that.

You need to add an inch to both the top and bottom border (to add 2" in length) of the Sunflower 17" x 15" block so that the new measurement will be 19" X 15". Thus the proportions are NOW a difference of 4" between the length and the width (that happens to be the size of your rail fence block) If you ONLY remove the top and bottom border and replace it with the same fabric but cut the border strip 2.5". Or you could choose to just add another 1" border strip to the top and the bottom to end up with a 19 x 15 inch finished block. REMEMBER, this is NOT including seam allowance.

With your rail fence, 3 block across and 4 down, that give you a finished size block of 12 x 16 inches. Then you can add a 2" cut border strip to each side of the block. That will add 3" to the length and width of the block, The block should be 19" x 15" finished. (19.5 x 15.5" unfinished)

Another hint is to make your final outside border a little bigger. That way, if your blocks are short you can cut all your blocks down to the exact unfinished size of 19.5: x 15.5". Hope this helps. PM me if you have any further questions. GOOD LUCK and HANG IN THERE !!

All you need to do is add an inch (finished) strip of the green check to the top and bottom, so cut your strips at 1 1/2" wide.

Since you are not trying to make it 19" x 15", none of this applies.