MeadowMist

Hi - do you pin All of your seams before stitching together or do you only pin longer seams together?

Is there a generalized cut-off - for instance if you are stitching 2 10" squares together, yes, pin them first, but if you are stitching 2 3"squares or less together it's okay to skip the pinning.

bearisgray

I pin long seams together - in fact I halve and quarter them before joining them - and then match the half and quarter points. I do measure them first to see if they are the same length.

If there are a lot of intersections that are not behaving well, I pin them. If they are behaving very badly, I baste them first before sewing them with small stitches.

Piecing small pieces together, generally I just hold them together.

Iceblossom

I'm a big believer in pinning, every 2" or so. So for me a 3" square would probably get two pins, one towards either side, but in general if I'm going to pin I'm going to use 3 pins at a time, so that would be a 6"-ish unit.

But... when I am doing strip piecing of WoF (width of fabric) together, I do that without pinning. After it is subcut though or there is a seam, there is pretty much always a pin. One big reason is I press open and I like to pin down the leading edge so it doesn't get flipped. I use the big long quilt pins but they are well down from the seam line/presser foot, an inch or so down.

I have friends who press to the side or don't press at all and their styles work for them. I've incorporated pinning time into a portable project that I can do at my Tuesday group, or I went to my husband's bowling league the other night, they are getting used to me sitting in the background pinning or hand sewing binding. Can also do while watching tv.

Doggramma

I only pin long seams, like a border. And I pin when there are tricky points to match up.

QuiltnNan

I very rarely pin, but I often pin the borders

selm

I rarely if every pin seams including binding. I find if I sew slowly as I match edges and pay attention to not stretching fabric everything works out. It probably takes as long as taking the time to pin then racing through the stitching. I think I was probably taught this way as I usually research any educational material before starting anything new. (It's been so long I really don't remember). Anyway, this works for me and I've been told my piecing is really good so I'll keep doing it this way.

Tartan

​I pin long seams because I don’t like how they get twisted around before they go through the machine. If interactions have to match, I pin at the intersections and ease between them.

patricej

i always pin intersections.
on a long seam, i pin and then baste.
once they are all basted accurately, i sew.

sewingitalltogether

I don't always pin the seams. Straight seams are easy enough to sew. Curved seams I pin, a lot. And am gluing the curved seams that give me trouble.

feline fanatic

Since discovering how easy it was to glue, I rarely pin. I glue critical matching intersections setting the glue with my iron. I have a bottle of Elmers Washable school glue at my ironing board always. A critical matching intersection trumps length for me. I don't pin/glue small units and have gone as long as 12" with not pinning/gluing as long as there wasn't a critical intersection that needed to match up.

Oops, edited to add, like "sewingitalltogether", I do pin curves. I have not tried gluing them so thanks for that input sewingit.