I always forget all the little short cuts that can make patchwork go more smoothly. I think about strip sets only after I've individually stitched an entire postage stamp style quilt.

So, when it came to making a non-traditional rail fence block I put extra thought into what I could do to make the piecing part go a little more smoothly.

Here's how I make the blocks for my broken fence quilt.

I cut 12 1/2" squares of fabric.  (a total of 36 for my lap quilt)

I want 5 bars in each block so I work with 5 pieces of fabric at a time.

I stack the five pieces on top of each other and make 4 random cuts with my rotary cutter.

Then divide the pieces so that each block had a slice from each fabric.

I stitch the pieces together with a 1/4" seam and press.

After pressing, I trim each block to 10 1/4 " square.

This method gives you 5 blocks at a time, but my quilt is made of 36 blocks.  For the last block you can just make one block with individually cut strips, you can make an extra set of five (use extras on back or in another project), or you can do one set of six.  I will warn you (because I didn't think this all way through when I chose this option) if you do six cuts, your block will be shorter than 10 1/4" .  I simply add an extra strip on those blocks.

For this quilt I cut the bluish blocks vertically and the reddish blocks horizontally.

happy piecing

It seems my brother hasn't picked up his mail in a while.  Either that, or he did pick up his mail and doesn't like his Christmas present.  Of course, the third possibility is the postman decided he was getting a bit chilled with all the snow and decided to cozy up with it himself.  However having known my brother all my life, I'm going with the first option.

The front has Civil War battle scenes along with portraits of Lee and Grant and confederate and union money.  I based the pattern loosely (very loosely) on the idea of a flag, blue and white on the left red and white stripes on the right.

The border is a repeat of the Gettysburg address in Lincoln's handwriting.

The back has a bit of piecing with the battle scene panels in bands of blue and ivory stars and stripes.  It's channel quilted every inch or so and bound with a burgundy and khaki floral.

If it turns out it was the postman, I'm hoping the postman is as much of a history buff as my brother.