With apologies to Vincent, I must say: ears are such a nuisance.
Any quilter who has ever worked with bias squares knows what I'm talking about: those annoying little points that stick out when you press the seam to one side. Do you just ignore them, or cut them off?
Being lazy to the core, I always ignored them. Then I started doing my piecing on an antique treadle machine (yeah, it's a hoot!). The seam gauge is one of those metal bar thingies that sticks up, and the ears don't sail past it smoothly. What a pain in the you-know-what.
Ah, but then I discovered a positive motivation for trimming my triangle tips before stitching. For bias squares, it's not such a big deal, since the triangles line up right on top of one another. But when the triangles are laid crosswise for stitching (think of piecing a long bias strip for binding), I never seemed to align them quite right.
Then I discovered the solution: just trim exactly 3/8 inch from the triangle points before stitching. I can cut stacks of them with my rotary cutter. Voila! squared-off edges that align perfectly, and NO EARS!
You knew that already? Well, aren't you just a Miss Smartypants!
Any quilter who has ever worked with bias squares knows what I'm talking about: those annoying little points that stick out when you press the seam to one side. Do you just ignore them, or cut them off?
Being lazy to the core, I always ignored them. Then I started doing my piecing on an antique treadle machine (yeah, it's a hoot!). The seam gauge is one of those metal bar thingies that sticks up, and the ears don't sail past it smoothly. What a pain in the you-know-what.
Ah, but then I discovered a positive motivation for trimming my triangle tips before stitching. For bias squares, it's not such a big deal, since the triangles line up right on top of one another. But when the triangles are laid crosswise for stitching (think of piecing a long bias strip for binding), I never seemed to align them quite right.
Then I discovered the solution: just trim exactly 3/8 inch from the triangle points before stitching. I can cut stacks of them with my rotary cutter. Voila! squared-off edges that align perfectly, and NO EARS!
You knew that already? Well, aren't you just a Miss Smartypants!
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