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The way you press your seams can
make a big difference when it comes to precision in your work. I love precision but I also want quilting to be enjoyable so I have a few easy pointers to help you be precise. I know some quilters who press their seams open ~ always. I don't, I rarely do and I'll show you the times I do. I think pressing your seams to the side is a great aid to precise quilting. That is what we will look at today. |
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Quilting is all about bringing small
pieces of fabric together and that means lots of seams! I generally press my seams to the dark fabric. When we are then sewing 2 units together I like to "lock" that seam together as shown above. You can see the pressed seams are opposing each other and when you bring those units together to pin you can feel them "lock" together. |
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As a result, the points on this
4-patch are perfect. |
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Let's say we want to make this
pinwheel block from Half Square Triangles. All the seams on these HST's are pressed to the dark fabric. We will lay them out in 2 rows as shown. |
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Now we will sew the 2 rows together.
When we are pinning the seam we want to make sure the seams "lock" together where the points will be ~ this is very important. |
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After sewing the points are perfect.
Now we have to think about the next seams, press the seam in row 1 to the left and the seam in row 2 to the right. "Lock" those opposing seams when pinning and sew your seam taking care to maintain a 1/4" seam. |
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Here is the block, a pinwheel
with very precise points. |
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Now is one of the times when
I press a seam open. There are so many pieces of fabric coming together in the center of this block, it is best to press the seam open to reduce bulk. |
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Now let's work on this Flying
Geese unit that has some different rules. We will make it from 4 Half Square Triangles, lay them out as shown but in this case the seams of the 2 HST's on the left have their seams pressed to the dark fabric but the 2 HST's on the right have their seams pressed to the light fabric. |
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When we pin the units together
we will be able to "lock" these seams together and achieve the desired perfect points as shown above. We could only make this happen by planning our pressing method beforehand. We needed to press some seams to the light fabric to make this happen. Once again, after sewing the rows together we will press the seam in row 1 to the left and the seam in row 2 to the right so we can "lock" them together. |
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