Most quilters meet the rail fence early and then walk past it, because it looks like the easy one. Straight strips, no points to match, nothing to line up. There is nothing to prove.
That is exactly why it is worth coming back to. A rail fence quilt gives you a whole quilt out of one shape, and it puts every ounce of the design into the arrangement rather than the sewing.
Railings, designed by Ariga Wilson for Robert Kaufman Fabrics, is a free rail fence quilt pattern, and it is the reason this page exists.
Railings at a glance
- Pattern. Railings.
- Designer. Ariga Wilson.
- Published by. Robert Kaufman Fabrics. Free to download for personal use.
- Skill level. Beginner, as rated by Robert Kaufman.
- Finished size. 56 by 72 inches. A generous throw, long enough to cover someone properly on the sofa.
- Block. Rail fence, four rails to the block.
- Precuts. Fat quarter friendly. The pattern is written for a bundle of eighteen, so a fat quarter bundle of any collection you like will do the same job.
- Fabric collection. Flowerhouse: At the Cottage, by Debbie Beaves for Robert Kaufman.
- Fabrics. Seventeen fat quarters: five blues, three pinks, three in Aloe, a soft green, two purples, one yellow, one Camellia, a deep rose, one Pansy, a violet, and one white. Two teal prints are bought as yardage rather than fat quarters.
- Backing. 3 3/4 yards at the usual 42 inch width, which means piecing two lengths and living with a seam down the middle. One cut of 108 inch wide backing covers a quilt this size with no seam at all, and takes less fabric to do it.
- The pattern itself. Five pages, with illustrations throughout.
What Ariga Wilson did with the block
The rail fence is about as plain a block as quilting has. What makes Railings worth downloading is not the block, it is what she does with sixty three of them.
Most rail fence quilts read as stripes or as a basket weave. Railings reads as a zigzag, a streak of lightning stepping across the top, and it gets there through the colour grouping as much as the turning of the blocks. The prints are sorted into colour families so the zigzag moves through the palette as it crosses the quilt rather than repeating the same run over and over.
The pale prints are doing more work than they look. They are what separates one colour group from the next, and what lets the eye follow the steps instead of getting lost among eighteen florals.
Which block goes where is the one thing you cannot work out from the block alone, and it is exactly what the layout diagram in the pattern is for. Go and look at the picture on the pattern page before you decide whether you want to make it.
New to the block itself
If you have never made a rail fence, our own guide to the rail fence quilt block covers where the cutting sizes come from, how to build it from a strip set, and the three ways of setting it. It works at any block size, and it is free.
What else you can make this way
Three more free quilt patterns in our library are built from strips and straight seams rather than blocks with points.
Cross Hatch uses strip sets to make a diagonal lattice. Passage builds a whole quilt from rectangles in ocean colours. Stacked Strips Runner is the same idea at table runner size, if you want to try the sewing before committing to a quilt.
Download the free Railings rail fence quilt pattern
The pattern is five pages: fabric requirements, cutting directions, block assembly and the full quilt layout diagram, all with illustrations. Robert Kaufman host it themselves and it is free to download for personal use.
Download the Railings quilt pattern PDF, or visit the Railings pattern page at Robert Kaufman to see the fabrics up close.
More free patterns like this one are collected in our free quilt patterns library, and the free patterns hub sorts them by the kind of quilt you feel like making.
Before you start
If you are somewhere between your first quilt and your fifth, this is a good one to have in the pile. The cutting is one measurement, the sewing is straight lines, and the quilt that comes out the other end looks like it took far more deciding than it did.
Marbelia Fernandes
The Fabric Hut Co-Founder
P.S. Lay your blocks out on the floor before you sew a single row. The design depends entirely on which way each block is turned, and it is a great deal easier to spin a block on the carpet than to unpick one at eleven at night.
Railings is designed by Ariga Wilson for Robert Kaufman Fabrics, featuring Flowerhouse: At the Cottage by Debbie Beaves. Pattern copyright Robert Kaufman Fabrics, free for personal use. Do download it from them.
