Quilt Making - Hints for Accurate Machine Piecing
Posted: Sunday, August 22, 2010
by Pauline Rogers
Quilters World
1. One trick to achieve accurate piecing is to only use one brand of ruler on your project. Different brands will have slight variations (sometimes more than slight in inferior products) resulting in a different measurement.
2. Chain piecing turns your sewing machine into an amazing assembly line. Pile the pieces to be sewn into pairs, with right sides facing. Join the first pair but don't cut the thread or lift the foot. Keep feeding in a pair of pieces, and sew again. After you have sewn all your pieces, you only need to go back and clip the thread between the pairs.
4. When sewing long strips together, first sew two strips together in one direction. Then sew the third strip to the others in the opposite direction. This prevents the strips curving.
5. Annoying threads all over the floor? Tired of wasting thread? Do you have problems with the fabric bunching up when starting a seam? Does the thread sometimes tangle underneath? Try this solution for all these problems. Fold a scrap of fabric 1¼" wide by 2" long in half lengthways. Use this to sew onto at the beginning and end of each seam just like chain piecing.
6. Don't forget to trim all threads when piecing by machine. If you do this as you go along you won't have little snippets of thread poking behind light coloured material in your finished quilt.
7. Machine Needles - Don't make the mistake of using just any needle. When piecing, you should use a size 80 needle. After every six hours of sewing change the needle. Regular needle changes will ensure that your stitches will set into the fabric much better, and not pull threads.
8. Your ¼" on your ruler should measure the same as the ¼" foot of your sewing machine. Check it for accuracy.
9. Pfaff sewing machine, with the built in walking foot (IDT - integrated dual technology) is the ultimate sewing machine for machine piecing. The fabric is "walked through" from the top and the bottom at the same time so there is no fabric slippage. Since the bottom doesn't strength away from the top you can achieve perfect piecing with ease.
This Article has been viewed 590 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
No comments yet.We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.