perfect seams | Night Quilter

I have had a bunch of tutorial ideas on the back burner for quite some time. Even the best ideas, without a babysitter and a day with sufficient bright light for photographing, get stuck on the back burner sometimes. My friends Stephanie and Michelle over at Late Night Quilter are kicking off a new link-up for quilter bloggers called Tips & Tutorials Tuesday, which is the perfect ~~kick in the pants~~ motivator to get me sharing some of those tips and tutorials I’ve been wanting to share with you for months.

Did you know that I have a few tutorials available now? If you click the “Tutorials” heading on the top toolbar of my blog, it will take you to a collection of my tutorials. Today, I thought I’d feature the tutorials I’ve created so far.

Key to My Heart

My most recent tutorial goes along with a pattern I released recently for Valentine’s Day (or any other purpose, since you can fussy cut anything you want for the center of the heart) called Key to My Heart. It’s a quick and easy pattern that includes paper piecing to help perfect the accuracy and placement of the features within the heart, and applique to make the heart-part easy peasy! The tutorial takes you through each step with photographs to help clarify the instructions.

You can find the tutorial HERE and buy the pattern for only $2 on Craftsy or Payhip. (See below for information about a killer sale I’m offering for the next week).

Basic Foundation Paper Piecing

Since I design paper piecing patterns, I thought it would be a great help to create a basic foundation paper piecing tutorial. I absolutely love the accuracy, perfection, and endless possibility of designs that paper piecing brings you, but I know that it is a struggle for some. Once I wrapped my brain around the fact that I was sewing something backwards while looking through a mirror, it all clicked. Hopefully my tutorial is helpful to those of you who perhaps want to paper piece, but don’t quite know where to begin. Here are some sneak peeks at the tutorial, which you can find HERE.

Perfect 1/4″ Seams

The third and final tutorial is more of a tip. It’s just one of the little tricks I’ve found to help sew accurate 1/4″ seams. As extraneous as it may seem, I’ve found that taking the extra few minutes to cut accurately and employ little tricks to help ensure your seams are consistent throughout your project really makes a HUGE difference with the outcome. Read the tip HERE and let me know what you think!

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Finally, since Valentine’s Day is only four days away, and in celebration of all of my new followers, I am having a flash sale for the next week: buy any three (3) patterns for only $4. Patterns usually range from $2.50-$4.50 so this is definitely a deal! Since coupon codes and open offers such as this one aren’t really compatible with Craftsy, if you buy three patterns, I will immediately refund the difference from $4, so you will be paying only $4 for three patterns of your choice. Visit my Craftsy store HERE. For interested international buyers, if you see a pattern on Craftsy that is not available in my Payhip store, email me at thenightquilter@gmail.com and I will be sure to get the pattern either up on Payhip or emailed directly to you.

I hope you find these tutorials helpful, and I’m looking forward to sharing more tips and tutorials in the future. I’m linking up with my fellow Late Night Quilters for Tips & Tutorials Tuesday. Go check out some of the other great tips, too!

Today, March 15, 2014 is officially National Quilting Day! To celebrate, I actually spent some time… quilting! I made progress on a quilt that I’m making as a gift, so details will not be shared today (as much as I want to!). While piecing the final border of the quilt, I was reflecting on how well my 1/4″ seams come out now that I use a secret trick shared by a local quilter. Today is the perfect day to share the trick!

All you need is one basic supply: 1/4″ quilters tape. I use Dritz Quilter’s Tape but any brand should work. I stretch the quilters tape the full length of my sewing machine, with the machine’s 1/4″ seam guide line aligned with the tape’s left edge. Take your time and get the tape perfectly aligned and straight, since this will be your guide. Before employing this trick, my 1/4″ seams were extremely varied and inconsistent, which lead to puckery and not-quite matching seam intersections. This tape provides a visual and uninterrupted guide while I’m sewing, and my seams have been SO much better.

A scant 1/4″ seam, meaning it is a bit less than 1/4″ in width, is preferred since pressing often makes up for the minor discrepancy. If your seam is larger than 1/4″, however, there’s no fixing it!

photo 2 (5) (1) — Look at that perfect seam!

A seam that is a little bit off might not seem like a big deal, but when you’re piecing a border composed of many pieces, when every seam is a little too wide it eventually adds up to a border that is an inch or more too small! The exactness of quilting is one of the aspects that really resonates with me, and this new seam trick has worked wonders in helping me create quilts with exactly matching seams, visible symmetry, and MUCH less frustration.