PIECING HINTS

you hi oh I'm so glad you're here I'm working on a new quilt this one right here and while I was working on it it occurred to me that I have developed a lot of hints over my many years of teaching on sewing seams and I would like to share them with you today so stick around and I'll show you my hints first problem we always encounter is you take a stitch and all of that fabric just go right down in the hole you got a big mess so what a lot of people will do is they'll have this little starter piece that's where they start their seam and then they just sew on here right onto here and wonderful doesn't go down another hint is this people are used to just sewing down here like this okay but look at this these two don't come together at the end that's going to make a problem when you go to sew across with your next row so what I do is this needle in that's important so it stays where it's supposed to then I come down here and I match these and then I pull on it and that's called easing you know my feeling is if you can put a name to it it's fine and I keep going nice and even then I'm ready for the next one I set it up and just chain it right on like this and let me show you that this is several pieces I have changed pieced together I just sew down here stuff this one up next to it kept sewing stuff this one up next to it kept sewing and then I'll cut them apart later and that's called chain piecing saves on time saves on thread saves on your nerves times you can't avoid having your seams go in the direction you're sewing they're going to be in the opposite direction of what you're sewing and you know perfectly well like I do that a lot of times those little seams flip over that's because they're getting caught on this lip as they go under there that little that little groove is catching them and flipping them over well let's cover up that groove and make it smooth all we do is take a little tape any kind of tape put it over top of that and we have a nice smooth area look at this we will get this song against the scene turn it over not one seam flipped over isn't that cool okay man what we did before where I match these two right here and then I pulled oh this is bias and this is bias when you are sowing bias Tobias don't stretch in fact help it don't fit through like this and I'm just pushing just a little bit so that is absolutely no tug on it now the next problem and I see this all the time in my classes is when people get to the end of this right here their machine has a tendency to carry it off the end like this that will get you in more trouble to do that now let me show you how to take care of that here's what we do real nice getting to the end now and you want to be aware that you're at a tricky point so you can take something here like I have this little squeeze which by the way is one of my favorite tools and I'm going to pull it out here like this or some of you can manage just to push with your fingers over here but just be aware of that corner so you come off nice and clean and the same width as all the way up here that will go so far in making your piecing easier let's take a closer look at these right here here is the one that your sewing machine here's one where the sewing machine has dragged it off the corner and see how much narrower this is then this believe me that's going to get you in trouble you want it to look like this where the width between here and here is the same throughout the whole thing okay we do a lot of quilting these days with long strips and then we cut off squares okay and then put all of those together to make this so much easier than what we used to do so a little few hints on sewing strips together now I've just sewn this one together right here and I'm ready to put the third strip on so I come along I get that third strip and I ready to sew you know what let's check this first because if you've reached the state of cocky and you're feeling really you know good about it and you just stick that on it's on the wrong side it's much better to find this out before you sew it then afterwards so put this over here now it's the way it's lined up the way it should be okay we're going to take this and come to the sewing machine with me and I'll give you a few hints on sewing this together okay we're going to sell some strips together and I have them all lined up here I have an even feed foot on there so it should go through nice and even but you know what if if you have two different slightly different weights of fabric or different finishes different fabrics of any kind they will still go together a little bit differently so what I do is I line everything up and I have it so it's nice and even and then I sit back here and I tug on it a little bit and then I take off I haven't moved my finger and thumb so I know that if it's still it hasn't bunched up here or anything it is nice and even the way I set it up okay by the way it looks like I'm off but that's because the camera is over here it's at an angle and then I'll go right through to the end now don't get upset when they don't come out even because they're not going to this is the width of the fabric that's been cut all right I'm going to sew this on right here a lot of people will do this instead of sewing in the same direction they'll start down here at the other end and so once you you get what I mean they will sew from the other end up this way so if this one has been pulling out of shape a little bit this one will pull out a shape a little bit this way and compensate this is very important when you're sewing like five or six strips together if here they can go really out of whack okay now take a look at what you have to work with if this seam doesn't match this seam look at that it doesn't matter because there's no point at which you have colors meeting that are going to stand out and go whoops so this is really this seam here is really the only one that you have to worry about matching I'm going to try to match this one over here because you know what the heck it's nicer okay so I'm going to turn this over now and here's my little trick come to the sewing machine with me here okay let's use that little starter thing there and now I've set my quarter scant quarter inch seams so I'm going to start here you notice I haven't matched anything I haven't even pinned that's because I'm going to match these blocks the same as I did when I was changing the original blocks I'm going to come down and my needle is in the fabric I'm going to hold this right here so when I get to there needle in the fabric going to take this right here it's a little off the machine so I'm going to go ahead a little bit and to put my finger right there and I can feel that of course I have my take there so it isn't going to take that seam and flip it over right match the next one and just keep going I haven't had to stop to pin anything get down to the end match it up and keep on going okay now let's look at see how I did whoops all right that's not the greatest little joining there now I got to tell you if this were going to be a quilt that was going to be used and you know just enjoyed I'd let that go I wouldn't fix that that's not that bad you know you can't see that from a galloping horse and that's a that's the quilters mantra if you can't see from a galloping horse it's okay but let's say I wanted to put up that up for judging you know what I would take that apart and redo it and all you have to do is rip from here to here what's that around and it'd probably pin it at that point and then so from here to here nobody would ever know the difference okay so that's the way you fix things and by the way I don't fix them until the quilt is ready for quilting because you can go back and take a look at that and maybe you'll say it's okay it's alright okay let's take a closer look at these seams that we tried to match up okay this one the seam is pressed this way is when the seam is pressed this way and we're going to try to match this right here so let's take this like this right here now try to understand because quite frankly you don't want to be ripping things out all the time yeah so we're going to try to get perfect matches and with very little practice you can do that but you need to it helps to understand what's going on your presser foot when it comes along here and meets this thing or right here this bulk it really does not want to go over and so it pushes it ahead you may have put it snug that up but when that presser foot comes along and pushes it ahead it separates those two and you have a slight mismatch now let's talk about the other way if you were coming this way towards your seam your bulk is here but look down here you've got some bulk and when the presser foot pushes this ahead that bulk down there stops it and so you have a perfect Mitch a perfect match seam here because it actually pushes it together let's go back to here here it has pushed it apart because you have nothing here to stop it from going ahead so what you want to do when you have a situation like this your seam is going this way push it up a little bit farther not up on top but really really Snug that in good and proper so it stays there when that presser foot comes over okay let's not be ripping out all the time let's get it match the first time okay those are some really good hints on PC putting your pieces together and making your seams behave this by the way is going to be a gorgeous quilt isn't it simple rail fence and again a little bit about color I took my color from this fabric here I love that fabric and so manufacturer says all those colors go together so good that's what I'm going to use and that's what I put together and I love it happy piecing see you later bye

Channel: Donna Poster

Views: 86,616

Rating: 4.9566951 out of 5

Keywords: donna poster, donna, quilting, piecing, strip piecing, Foundation Piecing, bias piecing

Id: --vIltDWpl0

Length: 16min 20sec (980 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 24 2013