How do you sew a straight seam?

I was stumped by the perfect scant 1/4 inch seam until I came up with my method, and when I posted about it here a couple of people decided to try it with marvelously straight results.

My best long 1/4 inch seams were done with blue painter's tape along the edge of the seam line. Ramrod straight 3 foot long seams. The seams were on a baby quilt, but I will use this trick for all long seams from now on. I also was able to make perfect corner alignment every time because I could easily match and pin the points at the exact seam line rather than pinning at an estimated seam line. I used blue painter's tape because I knew it would come off the fabric easily and it was easy to see against the fabric, but quilter's tape would work just as well. No other method has worked so well for me.

Specific instructions: Align two pieces of fabric along the edge to be sewn. Lay the edge of the cutting ruler over the edge of fabric by lining up the edge of the fabric with the 1/4" marking. In other words, the ruler overlaps the fabric only a 1/4" along the side to be sewn. Take the tape and lay it down in a line butting up against the side of the ruler. Remove ruler and now you can easily see a perfect

One word of advice: Don't sew through the tape because it's really hard to remove when it's sewn onto the fabric. Debra in VA See my quilts at

Howdy!

Another reason I like to put my Janome on the dining table, there's lots of room on either side to support the weight of the fabric, w/ leaves on each end of the table that pull out for more space. ;-)

Practice, Jerry. Practice, luck and M&Ms.

R/Sandy--going back to see if Val was or was related to my Home Ec teacher

Fantastic advice given. I've just a bit to add: when all is said and done and you start wavering at the end of a seam GET UP AND WALK AWAY. Walk around the room/ house/whatever, give your arms (whole bod if ya want) a good shake out (like the Hokey-Pokey), take a few long slow in/out breaths, and then go back and start again. You probably have gotten into stress mode and every thing has tensed to a death grip and that poor fabric CAN'T go where it's suppose to. Sometimes it doesn't hurt to just get up and move around every so many seams anyway....keeps you relaxed and ENJOYING the process.

You can teach yourself to use the pedal with your other foot. I did. Fractured right toe had to be UP so DS put a chair in under the table for my foot on it and moved the pedal over to the left side. Did a few practice seams without thread on lined paper to see if I could and off I went. Didn't get 'up to usual speed' but I was able to sew......and that's all that mattered.

HTH Butterfly (thanks for asking)

...cut...

......cut....

I had DGS#1 practice on lined paper, too, when he was making his little mat. It worked great! :)

I have three different 1/4" feet and love them all for different things. I have a "regular" Bernina 1/4" foot, and it's wonderful for paper piecing and other places where I'm sewing a 1/4" seam but not necessarily where I'm at the edge of the fabric -- I hope you know what I mean. ;) Then I also have the Bernina #57, which is identical to the previous one, but it has the guide on the side to help prevent the fabric from straying -- that's the one I use the most. The third one is simply an old-fashioned straight-stitch foot (you know the kind -- one skinny toe and one slightly wider, like the old Singers all had), to which I've added a seam guide (that "arm-like" thing that goes through the back hole of the foot) at precisely 1/4". I had my DSIL chop off the excess length of the rod so it wouldn't get in the way. I like that one for places where I really need good visibility.

I have never got to grips with the 'starter' and 'ender' method. I honestly don't even know how to do it - it is referred to here in the NG a lot, and I've always been mystified - though I see that it helps people. I can't chain sew either, would you believe? I do have several little blank spots I'm afraid. . In message , Pat in Virginia writes

Jerry, try this for your next long, straight seam (heck, get out a couple of lengths of fabric and try basting the selvages together).

I'm assuming you're working with a portable machine set on a table, and you've got a lot of fabric hanging off the arm of the machine in various directions. If that's so, build up a smooth surface around the arm of the machine by piling up books, magazines, ,boards or whathave you until you've got them even with the bed of the machine -- make the new "table" at least a foot to the left and a foot behind the machine bed. Now try. If that helps, it's working by keeping the weight of the fabric from pulling the fabric that's under the needle. The cure then is an extension table (build it yourself from masonite (the slick upper surface is perfect) and plywood, or find an old table that's the right height* for you to work at and cut a hole in it big enough for your machine. Make a "cradle" attached to the bottom surface of the table of angle iron and plywood to hold the base of your machine.

Two other possible helps:

2) Learn to sew like they teach the folks who sew RTW. No, not zippers in less than a minute, but there's a technique of holding the fabric while you're feeding it into the machine that makes life much, much easier. IMHO, the best source for learning this is the Margaret Islander videos, which are expensive, so consider InterLibrary Loan for them (they're also on DVDs. The one that probably does the best job for what you need is Industrial Shortcuts, but you can pick up the basics from any of the series except maybe the dyeing and zippers titles (I've not seen those).

The basic fabric handling skills for RTW take about 15 minutes to learn, but it'll take a while before they're really part of you. But they really do work.

Oh, and if you've got quite a length of fabric to feed, feed the fabric from over your left shoulder to the presser foot, rather than letting it drag out of your lap.

Kay

Neighbor was over last night. She was 'amazed' at the concept of starter/enders and at the amount already sewn together for DH's quilt just from this past year alone (started when we moved to AZ one yr ago). Told her that if the SM was going to give me 'gopher guts' it would by the time I got to the end of the 2" square. She is going to try it :)

"If you get a seam started straight on your

Jerry, my machine not only will NOT feed fabric straight if it starts straight, but it may just try to jerk it out of my hands when I'm holding onto it. LOL. Actually, the problem isn't my machine. The problem is me. I'm not a straight line person. I'm not a point person. I am one of those people who go through life finding "appliqueable opportunities." :)

Good luck, Sunny

Dear Val, Will you come be my seamstress teacher? :) Seriously, you gave a wonderful lesson there. I never sewed anything before I took my first quilting class. I still struggle with basics that I have never heard of before. If I could go back, I'd take Home Ec, bug my mom, beg my aunts.... you name it. I'd learn to sew while young. Starting in your late 40s doesn't leave you much room to get really good.

Sunny

I figure that I could sew each seam individually, remove it from the machine and clip the thread, leaving a thread tail a couple of inches long that is essentially wasted. Or I could incorporate that thread into a seam by chain piecing a leader/ender. Frugality wins almost every time. And as Pat in VA said, those scrappy blocks build up fast! Roberta in D, Queen of the Scrap Heap

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obvious)

Jerry in North Alabama

Yes - but I don't have a 'formula'; I don't know what you actually *do* >gI figure that I could sew each seam individually, remove it from the machine

those).

Kay, what is RTW? Is the basic fabric handling done with holding the fabric between your fingers? Do you use the RTW method when machine piecing?

Jerry in North Alabama

Yes, Jerry, the needle does have to be in the center position. However, the fabric is still covering both feed dogs -- at least, it is on my machine that has the standard width feed dogs, as opposed to the wider ones on the higher-end machines. Mine is a Bernina 630.

It's just scraps! Lots of triangles, left from trimming batting strips for example. These will make 1.5 -2" half-triangle squares. Or 2.5" Ohio Star squares. Just take those triangles and attach to something with a nice contrast. No need to cut accurately. Press and then trim to a perfect square. (I recently bound a big quilt that needed 9 binding strips, sewn together, which yielded 17 triangles when the 45-degree seams were trimmed. Made 2 Ohio Star blocks, 6.5". There were enough leaders/enders involved to piece several blocks for the current main project. I cut the remaining 5 squares from other scraps.) Roberta in D, Queen of the Scrap Heap

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