Its Thursday and I’m talking about 1/4″ sewing seam allowances and presser feet in the latest Q(uilting) & Answer video.

This is another one of those confusing things that come up in workshops with newer quilters. A 1/4″ seam allowance seems awfully fiddly if you’ve been sewing garments with a generous 5/8″ seam allowance. It’s really worth learning though. Its one of those things that, if you learn to train yourself to hone in on that 1/4″ seam allowance with every quilting project early on, it will become second nature very quickly.

I was pretty haphazard about the whole 1/4″ seam allowance when I started quilting 21 years ago. In fact, I didn’t really pay attention to it. I just thought every seam allowance (clothing, quilting, any of it) should just align with the edge of whatever presser foot came with my sewing machine.

But quilts don’t need a ton of seam allowance (it creates a rather heavy, bulky quilt when you multiply big seam allowances over the entire quilt). Plus, it just wastes fabric, who wants that?

In this video I go over how to determine a 1/4″ seam allowance, what to do to mark it on your machine if you don’t have a 1/4″ presser foot and can’t get one. Try these tricks and make quilting much more enjoyable!