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Old 05-01-2017, 06:25 AM
  #28  
Sewnoma
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Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Sonoma County, CA
Posts: 4,299
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This is one of those "hidden" things that I use as a gauge for myself, to see if I'm improving.

My early quilts...the seams went all over the place - I was just happy if they held together and more or less lined up. It was totally beyond me to plan how my seams would lie. Twisted seams were totally normal - my way of handling those was usually to just open the seam up in the middle so it sort of gradually moved from one direction to the other, one half of the seam at a time, without a hard twist in any one spot. And that worked just fine, really. Heck, my first five or six quilts, I don't think I pressed them AT ALL before quilting them!

But nowadays I'm actually pretty good at planning out how I will press the block as I'm working on designing the quilt. Pressing and seam nesting is no longer an afterthought or based on luck, it's part of the original plan. As a result of that and paying close attention to my allowances as I'm piecing, a flipped seam like this is pretty rare for me! I'm actually sort of proud of the backs of my quilts now, all neatly pressed and organized and planned out nicely. Progress!!

I still just sort of make it work when it happens, though. (And it does still happen.) I can't think of a time I've un-sewn and redone a flipped seam. I rarely have white in my quilts, though, so that lets me get away with a lot, I think.

It's definitely a lot easier to press the back of a quilt that's had all the allowances stitched down in the proper direction. It's worth the extra planning just for that, if nothing else.
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