Monday, September 1, 2014

Quilting 101: Sewing Strips Together

Sew (that's a pun, get it, sew)... it has come to my attention that not everyone knows how to connect two hunks of fabric in order to make a long hunk of fabric.  What?  You may ask.  You know, let's say you need 40 inches of fabric on the edge of a quilt and you have two 30 inch pieces, so you need to combine them to get at least 40 inches.  OR, you want to  make a binding for your finished product.  OR, you're working on some other, completely un-quilt-related thing and you want a stronger bond (like a covalent bond, rather than an ionic bond... both strong, but one, clearly superior)... then this is for you!!!

Option 1:  Sew the two pieces, right side together using a 1/4 inch seam (or 1/2 inch, or 2 inch if you really want to).  You end up with a normal seam.  Ta Da.  Nothing wrong with that seam.  However, it's not a very strong seam, it will rip apart if any stress is put on it (or five year olds play tug-of-war with it) (or your dog/cat uses it as a play toy).


Option 2:  You do a biased seam!!! AKA Slanty seam (yes, that's the technical term).  So, how do you build this super duper strong seam?  Easy.
A) Place one hunk of fabric right side up, horizontally on your work surface.
B) Place the second hunk of fabric right side down, vertically over the first piece.  Line piece number 2's top and right edges with piece number 1's top and right edges.

C)  Get out a small ruler and fabric safe pen (or if you really like living on the edge you can eyeball it at the machine... I'm daring like that... sometimes... okay, not very often, but in this case, yes)
D) Mark from the upper left corner of piece 2 to the bottom right corner of piece 1 (no, I am not left handed, but I wanted the picture to look snazzy and every photo I took with my left hand came out blurry, so my impostor left hand is pretending to do the work, while my right hand is taking a steady photo) (just in case you were wondering)


E) Stitch on your line


F) Trim about 1/4 inch from your line, on the right hand side


G) Open, press


Woo Hoo... you now have a longer piece of fabric than you began with... and it's strong!!!  Excellent for edges, bindings and miscalculations in fabric cutting (not that I have ever done that).


P.S.  Aren't my new floors nice?  Please ignore all the other stuff that photo-bombed the picture :)