Cutting and Piecing. Piecing

Piecing a quilt top is not such a formidable task. Really a knowledge of plain sewing, accuracy and neatness are all that are required to add to that desire to make it yourself. What little helpful tricks and methods we have learned we pass on to you. The special instructions given with each pattern tell you how to build that particular block, unless it is an obviously simple plan.

The two pieces to be sewed together must be accurately placed and firmly held. Triangle or diamond points extend out exactly the width of a seam, as you will find by sewing them. Seams absolutely must be even. If you like a quarter inch seam, and start that way, keep all of them so. Three-sixteenths is the perfect width for ordinary materials in my opinion, and this width is easily gauged by a sewing machine foot. Some makers of exquisite quilts use 1/8 inch strong for their seams, and when the material is very close weave this width will hold. The less material to bunch up underneath at quilting time, the smoother the finished quilt will be. A knot or back stitch may be used to start each little piecing seam, and each must be well fastened at the end, as that seam end will be part of another seam later.

Two bias edges together will stretch unless your sewing thread fulls them a trifle taut. It is better to sew a weave thread against a bias edge when possible as in joining diamonds for the eight pointed star designs. Even a thirty-secondth of an inch if added to several diamonds on one side of a big Lone Star diamond, and the same number less several times on an adjacent point, will throw the plan awry. Seams must be even. Quilt piecing is a most precise craft where a few tiny inaccuracies add quickly into a total of ugly stretch or puckers.

Pieced sections should be pressed; the seam turned to one side is easier and we think better than trying to open all seams flat. Protruding angles may be trimmed as you piece, which will also add to the smoothness of your top.

Your decision as to a seam width and whether or not you allow seams extra to the unit patterns here given will change the estimated sizes a bit. But there is no one size a finished quilt must be If your block finishes 13 inches, where we say about 12, that will simply mean that 36-inch material will not cut the alternate blocks to so good an advantage, but otherwise your size is just as right as ours.