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Originally Posted by mythreesuns
(Post 5631236)
As a new quilter here, I have to add this comment. I know very little about machines, and I had a brother. My first several tied quilts seams were always opening up. Very frustrating to a newbie (anyone actually). I did some searching and found out with trial and error. Tension was the entire issue. Since I have now bought a self adjusting machine, I no longer have the issue. I have two brother machines in my house and not being used because of it. Will they ever be used...I doubt it. As I could never figure out how to get the tension just right. The one is only 6 months old.
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When I make quilts for children, when I quilt, I use a stitch that looks like a double sided blanket stitch and stitch in the ditch on every seam. I know these quilts will be thrown in a regular washing machine often.
My dear Step Mother made my oldest boy a small nap quilt when he was born. It got washed a lot and every time I had to repair the seams before letting him have it back. Thats why I do this style of quilting on kids quilts. |
I am always paranoid about seams...I have had quilts start showing openings where the seams have raveled. I don't quilt for sale or show, so I really double sew over the seams from the outside. Going against everything I have heard to do, but I don't want my work to come apart. I may be the only one who has the problem, but that's how I deal with it.
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The quilt I made with my granddaughter had lots of seams in which the thread broke. They were bias seams in a pinwheel pattern. We tied it. The quilt teachers should have warned us about that. We could have done a shorter stitch length; and a tied quilt is much more likely to have stress on these bias seams. The second one we made a few years later, I took back home and top-stitched every bias seam through the entire quilt. That put a nice patern on the back, too.
Now, I usually FMQ, and love it. If my seam allowances are too short (sometimes the fabric just doesn't stretch that far, lol) I use fray check. |
I too agree that there shouldn't be any problem with 1/4th inch seams, although I have used a serger to seama quilt that I know is going to get a lot of abuse when used, for example when I quilted for my cat and for one of my childrens dogs.
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If you use good quality fabric and good quality thread, you shouldn't have a problem. If you use fabric that you can read a newspaper through, you're bound to have issues.
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I have a friend (an older quilter) who sergers all of the seams of the quilts she makes for her grandchildren (they are all boys). She said that she did not want them to have issues if they did not gently care for the quilts.
The only time I have had issues with my 1/4" seams pulling out has been when I used some of the homespun fabrics that came out several years ago -- they really raveled. I stay stitched about 1/8" in before I sewed the blocks after I saw what was happening. |
When I started quilting I thought the 1/4 inch seam was rather small and I also worried about unraveling. But it seems to be the standard width for so long that if it was causing problems, quilters would have already remedied the situation. So I will bow to the wisdom of the ages and continue to use my 1/4 seams!
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It is important to have one's stitch balanced - I have noticed that a seam will pop if one of the threads is really tight and is just 'floating' on the surface.
I really hated to redo those seams - but when that thread pulled out soooo easily - - it was worth the effort. |
I had this happen when I purchased some fabric on sale. Apparently it was a bit on the rotten side. I now watch closely when purchasing any fabrics on sale.
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