At the Mancuso Quilt show in Philly this October, the instructor of one of my classes uses the Red label double sided sticky tape on the inside of the seam, not stitching through it, but just hold the places where the seams must meet, and putting pins on the other are of the block

I'm so glad this came up. I thought I was the only one who struggles with this.

I have tried regular pins, fork pins, basteing glue, and I still have a harder time that I ought to. It only seems to get worse when I pin. :? Machine Batsting or Glue work, but only sometimes. :? I honestly think I need an entire class on matching seams! :roll: If I could get beyond this, I might actually get more quilts completed!

I'll try the tape idea, Deb, do you have any more information on Red label tape? I don't know what that is. And I'll also attempt pinning the way that rndelling's has described. Am I hopeless?

Thanks everyone for the ideas. :)

It might be that your sewing machine is feeding the fabric unevenly -

Do you have a walking foot? That might help.

I have a fancy shmancy cost-a-fortune machine, complete with the sweetest 1/4" foot i've ever used. You'd think i could've thrown my pins into the gahbahge.

HAH!!! HAHH! and DOUBLE-HAH!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

some days, i need pins, staples, two glue guns and a roll of hundred-mile-an-hour tape. :lol:

just this morning, for example, i had to resort to this to get my stinkin' pieces to match properly ...

point being? it all boils down to the Dirty Harry question: "Are you feelin' lucky today, Punk? Well? Are ya?"

today was NOT my lucky day. :lol: :lol: :lol:

What I had found helpful is that I sew over the pins. When I first started, I used pins like Patrice showed in her pictures. Then in a quilting class, they told me that if I get IBC silk pins, they're much smaller pins and I can sew over them. I have lost a few pins over the years, but overall this has worked without incident.

I've found that this has been helpful in keeping my seams matched up. Before, I would pin, everything would be perfect, then I would pull out the pin right before it went under the needle, and that was enough to mess up my piecing and get not perfect corners. Whereas now, they pretty much stay in place.

Also, make sure your seams "nest" with each other, where you press them in opposite directions. That makes things a lot easier too.

This is the surefire way to keep those seams from moving. Use a needle and thread and tack (sew a stitch or repeat twice in the same place) across the seams where your sewn seam will go through. This way the seam will sew over the tack and you won't have to take it back out.

Anytime I decide to get in a hurry and use a pin I end up having to rip out the seam and start over with a tack. It is a stitch in time saves nine!!

I like to tack the sides as well instead of pin then you don't have to take pins back out. But pinning where there are no seams works too.

It takes a few minutes more to do this instead of pin but I think it is worth it! I lay everything out in rows then turn one row face down on the row beside it and then go through and tack each pair of blocks together. Then I stack the pairs in order and run them through the machine flag style. Saves some time. Then snip and iron.

Wow. I've never seen those before. thank you for the info. Now I have to go find some. (Like I don't have enough pins already) LOL :lol: :lol: :lol:

1.=are all your seams measuring the same? my friend was having issues, and so i watched her sew, and she tended to be narrow at the top of the seam and wide where she finished...(she was letting go of the fabric near the end of sewing, so the fabric would kind of go wide..) does that make sense?
2.= are you pressing them right?
3.= Swing by, i will help ya! I am outside of Detroit! :mrgreen:

i pin my seams almost in the seam..if i was doing something that had alot of seams..i match up the seams first, in stead of lining up the end first..

Okay, I get it, I'm not tyring hard enough. I'll pick up some duct tape! :D :D

Seriously though, there have been some great tips offered. Thank so much I'm going to try them ALL. :)

It is the 3M scotch tape, double side, but the instructor was very specific to say that it was the red plaid label. He pins the quilt, but does the tape right on the seams, but not where he is stitching. When he is done, he removes the tape. I took the Bird of Paradise paper piecing class from him. Amazing.......some of the pieces of fabric when we were done were no more than 1/8 of an inch.