Do you open seams to press
 

I always press the seams to the side. However, I notice that the seam then has a tiny hump where I press it to the side. I think that this tiny fold seems to cause one side to be a tiny bit smaller and the other side to be bigger. This seems to change the size of the block. Does anyone press the seams open? Or make the patch a tiny bit bigger and trim down to size?

I rarely press seams open. I actually like the little hump, if you are trying to stitch in the ditch, that little hump makes it easier to do as I like to rub my needle on the hump like just driving your car wheel along the curb. Yes, the thread and fold do take up a tiny bit of space. That is why I measure the final size of the block and see if I need to use a slightly bigger or smaller seam.

I press seams open 99.99% of the time. My blocks and quilt lay flatter, be sure to shorten your stitch length!

I do press seams to side unless joining blocks will make it hard to quilt like on a pinwheel then I press the seams open.

I press open almost all the time, and I personally believe the "to the side" is a leftover from hand sewing and from times when thinks like electric irons were not available. About the only time I don't is when doing curved seams like with Grandmother's Fan or Drunkard's Path.

Is a personal decision, but I think pressing open is/will be more popular with the machine quilting we have nowadays. I should mention that I find it necessary/helpful to use a small needle (typically I piece with a 10) and a small stitch length. I'm not sure how the newer machines measure stitches, but I use a 1.85-1.90 on my Bernina and not the 2.5 it defaults to when turning on. Open pressing or not, I feel the small stitches are good/required any time you are doing modern strip piecing techniques and sub-cutting through previous rounds of stitching.

For some of my reasons for pressing open, I like having one rule to follow. Pressing to the side is generally press to the darker fabric, that isn't always possible when you are putting together two white pieces for example. And then there are other construction considerations on why/when not pressing to the dark side is used. Sure, it's cool when the seams twirl around, but (again) I use a small needle and a small stitch and don't want to take out any stitches at all (plus I can't really see them). I feel I am more accurate with my seams, being able to meet the seam and the seam allowances -- I also pin a lot, every leading seam edge or every 2". A lot of my friends get great results hardly pinning at all, but not me. BTW, when I pin I am pretty far down the seam allowance so my pins don't go under the 1/4" quilter's foot I usually use.

Some people feel that pressing seams open is more time consuming and fiddly than pressing them to the side -- I don't see a great deal of difference when I am sewing with my friends. I have learned things like I keep my sets of units chain pieced until after I press, the running thread helps keep the units in line. Also, while I don't use starch, why I insist on my fabric being nicely pressed and crisp is because it helps the seams stand up to be opened flat.

I also do a lot of "cut big and trim down" techniques. 20 or so years ago I was not very complimentary on what I then called "fabric wasteful techniques". I find the time I spent being very accurate is about the amount of time I spend trimming, and I get better results with trimming. Not all shapes and/or techniques work well because of geometry stuff, so no "one rule" to help me. Various shapes, however, do have their own rules. This week for the Bonnie Hunter Mystery we will have a "triangle in a square" block. In that case I cut the triangle as directed, but make the "skinny" side triangles larger and trim them down.

I press open. I bought this pressing tool and it is wonderful for pressing seams open. It comes in different lengths.

https://www.missouriquiltco.com/prod...r&_ss=e&_v=1.0


It was at a terrific sale price at one of the four hour flash sales during the Birthday Bash sale and I thought I'd try it. I'm so glad I did.

I also press open. I get a better end result.

I always press to the side, I think pressing the seam open weakens the seams. I've seen quilts that have laddered threads between the seams, the only thing holding the fabric together in spots, when the seams have been pressed open. Probably due to the threads stretching or the fabric shrinking more than the threads.

I am currently assembling one, all seams open, where one section is all 1.5” squares, with white in the alternating squares. That’s a misery of seam intersections to match on the horizontal rows.

If one is missed, you can see it from space.

I somehow thought I would be using glue, but on my first attempt, I used way too much and had to perform a serious rescue. So many intersections had slipped a bit, anyway, that I didn’t think my gluing skills were at a level to continue.

So now I’m back to basting the intersections. 🤢

I generally like pressing open on HSTs and geese, but this, not so much. Pretty sure I’m missing some big idea here. . .

hugs, charlotte

I press to the side. I use lightweight thread for piecing (Bottomline or equivalent) so the thread doesn't take up much space. My units are just as accurate as they would be if I pressed the seam open. I think the seam is stronger when pressed to one side, and I do a lot of ditch stitching in addition to free motion. There is no ditch is you press the seams open.

When seams have to match perfectly I use Wonder Tape. It is 1/4" wide and holds the seams together. Washes out. For most scrappy or no contrast color quilts a missed matched seam doesn't bother me in the least.

I also press my seams open most of the time.

When I first started quilting, way back in the 80's, I pressed my seams to one side. That was just the way it was done - also add the fact that I hand sewn all my quilts. Now fast forward a few decades, I now piece my quilts by machine and I discovered the challenges of making mini quilts. Making these minis was where I started to press my seams open. With pressing my seams open those mini blocks and quilts laid a lot flatter and there wasn't much bulk where seams came together. I liked how my seams were laying flat and the bulk at intersections were reduced. So mini quilt, up to a queen size quilt (that's the largest I will make) my seams are pressed open.

Thanks for this, Onebyone.. I’ll look for it.

hugs, charlotte

I have always been a press to the side gal. The leaders of my quilting group have been trying to convert us to pressing open and I have to admit sometimes it does make a cleaner, sharper block when the seams are open. I have not been converted but do press open on exchange blocks so everyone's blocks are the same or when it is a better choice for our block-of-the-month blocks. When an intersection will make a big-o-lump because of multiple seams, I will yield to pressing open.

In the end, there will always be more than one way to complete a task.

I like to nest my intersections as much as possible, so pressing to one side works better for me. Also, when paper piecing, my seams end up being pressed every which way but open!

Nope, I press to the side. While I don't think pressing open weakens a quilt (back in the day, when many people made their own clothing but prior to sergers, seams were pressed open with no problem), I prefer to nest seams. Without pressing to the side, that means a lot of pinning. No thank you, lol.

yep, I learned by pressing to one side and I seldom pin, I just nest them together. I am with the pressing to one side results in a little stronger seam. I have quilted some quilts done by others and have seen where the seams that are pressed open have a slight gap in them with just thread. I think that mainly happens if a too long a stitch is used, or the overall tension of the machine is too loose so the seam can pull apart. On my APQS Lucey, I do not fear bulky seams as so far, my machine just seems to stitch over them just fine although I will be careful when approaching one of those multi seams junctions like in a pinwheel made with denim fabric. I think the bulky seam issue is more common when quilting on a domestic machine. I do press open on occasion when it makes sense, but I really don't like pinning. I seldom pin anything, just finger pin the seams nested together as I go. When I try and use pins, I have to remove them before I get to the needle anyway and just end up finger pinning the seams together then.

I will press open if I'm making a modern pattern that specifies to do so. Note that the little hump you've discovered forms the infamous 'ditch' of 'stitch in the ditch' quilting. If you press open, there is no ditch to stitch in, so that's one thing to keep in mind.

My principal interest in quilting is traditional quilts, and I prefer pressing to the side. I am able to match seams much better when they nest. And truth be told, I enjoy the link to the past that pressing to the side represents. I agree that it comes from the days of hand stitching, when covering the gaps in those seams was necessary.

Depends. Nesting is nice. Mostly my quilts don’t have points or matching seam. If one side already has seams and the other side doesn’t, press to the side the seams want to lay.

To accentuate a particular side of the seam, press to the focus fabric.

To avoid bulking joints for Longarm quilting, press open.

I’ll think of more later.

My forest quilt I pressed all of the seams open. I came from sewing clothing, where all seams are pressed open. But it was a pain with the smaller seam allowances. When I learned that quilters traditionally pressed to the side I converted to that and never looked back. Until now maybe? Because I’m reading on this thread that for mini quilts pressing open might help, and my mini blocks aren’t as nice looking as I’d like. So I’ll probably try pressing them open again soon.

I only press the seams open if I'm doing tiny precise pieces. Otherwise I press them to the side.

I agree with Dunster. I use a very fine thread and feel that the seam is stronger when I pressed the seams to the side.

I press to the side almost always. I also own a LA and have not found this to cause any problems at all. And I make 20 to 30 quilts a year so it's not like I've only done a few. I also feel this makes for a stronger join once it's quilted. I do spin my centers most of them time to help caught down bulk, and will grade seams (trim one side smaller than the other) with micro stuff, and that happens most often with paper piecing where there may be a piece that is less than 1/4 inch wide.

It's nice that we can try new methods and see if we like them better than others. And different machines may work better with different methods too.

I learned about pressing to side and nesting on this forum! Love this method! it is so satisfying when they nest together! I still press open on 8 pieced circle for kaleidoscope block. I agree with smaller stitching.

I piece with a 1.5 stitch length so pressing open won't weaken the seam. I don't have to backstitch using a small stitch length.

I usually press mine to the side, but I was recently working on a quilt where the pattern said specificly to press open, probably because there were lots of small pieces. I hated that! The seams were a PITA to open up and press and it was very time consuming. Also, it was harder to line up the matching seams. Augh!

I generally press to the side, I like to nest seams and can avoid a lot of pinning that way, and I get joy out of spinning seams. However if something won't go flat I'll press open.

Lots of good tips here when pressing the seams open...shorter stitch length for sure and a new one to me is using wonder tape to keep the intersections from moving since you can't nest seams that are pressed open.

I was wondering if anyone does both methods of pressing the seams open and pressing the seams to the side within the same block? We had a block exchange and I saw a block done this way. It looked fine in the quilt, once backed with batting and backing and quilted.

When I can I press open. Why? Because I quilt my own quilts and the flatter the top the less it interferes with my quilting stitches. Pressing seams open keeps the work flat as possible. That flatness also betrays any errors in piecing early in the process so I can quickly fix what is wrong.

At times you do have to press to the side, and when that happens I don't obsess about it.

I do not nest seams. I don't think simply nesting is the key to good seam intersections, partly because the bulk of the pressed-to-the-sides seams interferes with the ability to see where the intersection is and control where it stays when the presser foot hits the fabric bump.

I have found I get much better results pressing open and pinning seam intersections with very fine pins.

Not every block needs to be precision sewn, but when they do, pressing seams open is a help. Nothing bothers me more than a work that should be accurate but isn't. We put so much time and $$ into our quilts, it is a shame when the workmanship undermines the vision!

I suspect there are a few reasons quilters fail to be accurate when they should be: maybe they don't know how, maybe they don't enjoy the process of construction (I love it so am happy to take the time), maybe they don't have the tools and/or setup to work comfortably and consistently.

All those things can be remedied.

It is hard to press open a seam that is less than 1/4".
Even with nesting, I pin where seams meet. The seams simply must match! I have run into the problem of 2 seams going same direction, adding bulk.

I try and avoid that but when it happens, I will fip on of the seams to go in the other direction and then just simply press the twist in the seam about an inch or three from the matching ones. Probably not show worthy, but it does make the intersection lay flatter and usually the twist in the seam is not too bad. I hide from the quilt police.