My grandmother would call this an "old Indian trick". She didn't worry about being politically correct since she was an American Indian. Anyhow . . . I just set 28 beautiful sampler squares on point. Generally, the outside of the squares are ivory. The setting triangles are so dark green that they are almost black. Naturally, any oops would show. Even from a horse galloping by at least
15 feet away. They needed to be perfect. My Bernina does not take kindly to stitching over pins so I hauled out my favorite old Indian trick. I weaved a fine needle through the stitching for about 3/8" of the opposing seams to hold everything steady. Voila! (or viola, whichever) Yesss. Every one of those rascals is standing up perfectly on point. There was the tiny problem of finding that fine needle after stitching so I finally threaded it with about 3" red thread so it was easy to remove and proceed. Do you have a trick we need to know about? Polly
read that twice and still none the wiser. maybe i need some caffeine or maybe someone else who got it could splain it so i understand it.
i'm assuming you were talking about sewing seams similar to
2 x 2 patches into a single 4 patch block. i make sure the upper seam allowance goes under the needle first, then i have control over it. the lower seam that i can not see or control follows behind. the presser foot shoves the top fabric towards you, the feed dogs pull the lower fabric away from you and those nested seams snuggle into one another ever so sweetly. shrug, j.
Yes, Jeanne. Another cup of caffeine sounds good. In a perfect world, you can press the seams so that they nestle and everything comes out perfect. Sometimes, it just doesn't happen. This quilt top had too many seams needing to go the same way or the wrong way or so they couldn't be seen and angles coming in from all directions. These blocks were more like robbing a bank and shouting 'Nobody move'. Polly
And that, dear Polly, is why you are making those blocks and I'm not. I will drool over your quilt when you show it to us, but I could never, ever stick with something like that until I got it done. I so admire all of you who are "well a-pointed" quilters. All that nesting seams stuff just drives me crazy. Not good for somebody who probably needs Ritalin.
Read about this in one of Carol Doak's books, she does a couple of little stitches just at the seam intersections, checks to be sure they all match just right, then sews the whole seam. Easier taking out only a couple of stitches if you mess up. Roberta in D
"Polly Esther" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net...
Still befuddled. I will be happy to ooo and ahhhh if we ever get to see it, but Polly doesn't have a camera, right? So who's to say all those points really match up.
If Polly says they all match up, then it's good enough for me! LOL (But I sure wish she'd get a digi cam and show us her projects- reading about them just isn't as satisfying as seeing them!) I like to sew with a long basting type stitch. If something doesn't match, then it's easy to snip a few stitches, re-align the seams and baste again. When everything is good, then I sew over the basting stitches with my normal 18 st. per in. I sew v-e-r-y slowly over my pins. Why pin only to pull the pins out again before you sew the area you've just pinned???
EGADS! did some one cast doubts on Polly's claim to perfect points? *gasp* Bring me my salts! ~fanning~ However, I too desperately wish Polly would get a camera and post photos ....if only to see how long it takes for some of her pictures to show up on the 10 o'clock news. *snort!*
I can set in a perfect sleeve using just one pin or no pins at all (another old Indian trick) and I sew over pins at full speed ahead, in fact a great deal of my sewing is 'hammer down-full speed ahead. (Probably why I will never make it into the Quilting Hall of Fame.) BUT, for really persnickety stuff I baste. I've found that spot on accuracy doesn't happen with pins, just the pin going through fabric can wonk up a "to the gnat's a** exact match". A fine needle and single strand thread is tantamount to a procedure where "this'll work" is not accurate enough. If you don't have time to do it right the first time, where does the time come from to re-do it over, and over, and over.........?
You surely don't want me to really answer that question do you, Leslie? I could ... ...but ... ...>gg< . In message , Leslie & The Furbabies in MO. writes
This quilt I'm enjoying so much comes from Love of Quilting; July, September and November of '05. The name is Noel Sampler and it was designed by Anita Shackelford and Sharon Stroud. I can't show you the quilt just yet but I did look over at Anita Shackelford's website and she has some there that are similar. It began as a Christmas quilt but the yellows and a few pinks keep it from being limited to holiday display (although we do see people who leave their outdoor decorations up year round). Never willing to leave well enough alone, naturally I had to toss in one petal of purple. I'll think of someone to blame for making me do that. Polly
That sounds like a good trick, but I usually just pin and stitch carefully. If I need even more precision, I use the Carol Doak (baste a few stitches over the tricky part) trick.
And you were right the first time, Polly -- it's "voila" (or voilà, if you like accent marks ). A viola is a musical instrument. The former French teacher has spoken. ;)
Okay, Pat. I have to say that I pin v-e-r-y carefully. I do not just jab the pin in and out. I lay it at a very low angle and am very careful to not cause distortion with the pins and double and triple check that everything stays precisely lined up and matched before I start the sewing. Okay, Big Sis? VBG As Sunny said- it takes much longer to re-do it several times than to do it right the first time. I'm all for efficiency and getting 'er done!
You put a pin in the exact spot you're trying to match up, but you leave it sticking up vertically, that is, perpendicular to the fabric. Then you put 2 pins in the usual fashion to the right and left of the vertical pin. Now remove the vertical.
I think it's Carol Doak who then suggests: Instead of starting at one end of the piece and sewing straight across to the other end, start at the exact trouble spot that you're trying to line up. Sew to one end. Now go back to the trouble spot, and sew to the other end.
I have used these ideas, but I use them rarely. I'm more of the close-enough sort of piecer. I do sew over pins (and lose a needle occasionally but have never had to repair the machine because of it), and I do sometimes rip something out if it doesn't look quite right, but for the most part, I'm happy with the accuracy I've got.
I've done this, but there is a balance to be found, a lot of sections would be a lot of stopping and starting, I think it's most helpful when you have 8 seams meeting, as you would in the middle of a LeMoyne Star, because they are difficult to pin well. If possible I try and arrange things such that the side with more intersections is on top and the pressing is such that the cross of the threads is visible rather than under a seam allowance. If that's not possible, then I pin and I use a lot of pins, one isn't enough, if you take a nip of fabric small enough for accuracy, then it's small enough to be a pivot point, so I stick one straight through and pin around it, basically making 3 sides of a square, two are horizontal with heads out and I'm pretty coordinated at removing them as I go along and the third I put far enough in such that it is to the left of the foot. If it's a really troublesome point then I may even do a fourth pin, so it would look like a blocky A from the side.
Has anyone else noticed that the "sweet spot" of where to sew through for a perfect point is a couple of threads different dependent on which way you are going to press the seam when the seam isn't along an axis of symmetry? A perfect point pressed to the thinner side gets slightly chopped off if you are forced to press to the fatter side. This can be used to your advantage too, if there is a little space because you took too small a seam allowance, or a previous step resulted in a point a tad more than a 1/4 inch from the edge then some times pressing the seam towards the point does enough cutting off to make it perfect!
If you feel the urge to do something by machine, don't despair, the learning curve is fast learning curve. About a year ago, I was very frustrated, I had finally taken a beginning quilting class and was branching out rapidly into projects of my own. I cursed at my sewing machine, blaming it on my problems. Then I read a book by Sally Collins and picked up many tips on accuracy, I found their was so much more to it that the step at the sewing machine and even there I realised it was me, not the machine, it was good enough, their are some machines out their that it is very difficult to sew a quarter inch seam, such as the feed dogs being too wide apart. I told myself I could learn to piece well on that machine and when I'd proved I had the skill, then I could start more seriously looking at purchasing a new machine. It's difficult to estimate how many hours it took, the amount I would sew in a week would vary, but it was about 4 months and things were transformed and looking back their are ways I could have made the process easier on myself, fabric selection that is forgiving gives you space to make errors that won't show without close inspection, the things I did at that time tended to have high contrast, or fairly plain fabrics. I have a mariners compass sat in front of me right now where the fabric choices are distinct enough not to blunt the points but with enough colours in common that the couple of points that I would have resewn in plainer fabrics are very difficult to find - which lets you complete projects whilst learning.
Obviously I still desired a new machine, but it became a case of a new machine might make things faster and easier, but not better. I got lucky and DH decided I should get a new machine before Christmas, when I'd been thinking it would be another year away and the results are exactly what I expected, it feeds much more smoothly, their are sew many aids to an accurate seam that I can sew a bit faster, the inline thread snippers are a real time and thread saver when chain piecing isn't possible.
I would honestly say that I am not someone who is naturally neat and accurate, I'm someone who's creative, loves colours and patterns. Obviously I do take some enjoyment from the process otherwise I wouldn't be doing it. I've had to pull on skills that are not natural to me to improve the quality of my piecing, I had to slow down, I had to check, I had to be persistent. I would definitely say when it comes to the physical things like manual dexterity, hand eye coordination and what not I'm somewhere in the average range and that if I can learn the skills, then the vast majority of other people can too. I'm lucky that I have talents in other areas so that other parts of the design, cutting, piecing process are easy, I'm one of those very annoying people who you can show a picture too, give a measurement and I can just do it, but that's a completely different set of skills to when you've got your pile of patches to chain piece, actually doing it well. It's a bit like learning to write, you move from print to cursive, but that's different to the content, but that if you can only print, it's slow and frustrating and the content suffers as a consequence. So if skillful machine piecing is something you, or anyone else wants to acheive, my recommendations are to get a book by Sally Collins, believe in yourself and accept it will take time.
I know, Sandy, I know. But it is such fun when you do something truly amazing such as deep frying a 40-pound turkey or changing a flat tire on a muddy tractor without even getting a smudge of mud on your white gloves to exclaim, "viola". Not only can you really mess with people's minds but it's also a good test to see if anybody's listening. It is almost as good as that one I read a few days ago that said, "Sometimes you just have to take the bull by the horns and make lemonade". Easy to entertain us old folks. Polly
"Sandy" And you were right the first time, Polly -- it's "voila" (or voilà, if
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