Originally Posted by
Anna O
A 1/4" seams allowance should be fine for most projects. The only time a scant would really matter is if you have small piece and have a "gazillion" of them in your project. More important is to use the same sewing machine for the entire project. I haven't figured it out (and probably never will), but 1/4" seam on one machine isn't necessarily 1/4" seam on another, even if you use a 1/4" seam foot. Crazy, but true.
My friends and I discovered this when I sewed a quilt on my machine and part of it on a friend's. And we discovered it again when we were all quilting on a Saturday. One gal's machine conked out, so she used the spare machine of another in the group. Her blocks came out different from one machine to the other. And we measured the seams, both were 1/4 inch! Weird!