Stitches to the inch - 10 12 14 or more?
I set my machine to 1.8 for piecing because my Janome dealer told me to. Three years ago....haha! Recently, doing Washington Medallion (my name for it is Washington Monument) I measured my strips for the checkerboard, and lo and behold, they were 12 1/2" until they were pieced to each other, at which point I lost 1/4".
So, I pulled and ironed them out until they conformed to spec.
Later, I went back to the piecing and forgot to adjust the setting so it pieced at the standard 2.2 setting. Suddenly all my piecing was 12 1/2" AFTER SEWING! And it wasn't scrunched up a little from the tiny stitches.
Light dawns over Marblehead, as we say here. So I pulled out two scraps of plain dark cotton and made a test strip and measured it with the cute little bit of ruler which came with my old Elna. 1.8 on my Janome was so many stitches I couldn't count them accurately. 2.2 was 13-14 stitches per inch depending on my eyesight.
I am now looking back at some earlier work which required accuracy and wondering...did I shoot myself in the foot? Was that why sometimes things which were cut and measured did not measure right after sewing?
I thought I was Little Miss Accuracy...but now I am wondering if I should call myself "miss accuracy" LOL
Comments appreciated!