Hi, I took a tip from a really smart woman that has turned out almost perfect seams everytime. After you nest your seams together use Clover Patchwork Pins to pin on each side of the seam line securing the seam allowances with the pins. When you sew and approach a pin let your needle come down catching first seam allowance, remove that pin, sew over the seam and than remove your other pin. Hope this makes sense. But my point is, I have used every pin for pinning and these are the absolute best for matching up seams. So good luck to you. C.

I always press the seams in opposite directions if possible. Then I pin the seams. Usually have good luck with matching up my seams. However, as I was hand quilting on my latest scrappy 2" squares quilt last night, I came upon a seam that was about 1/16th off. I said something about it. DH laughed at me.

PIN!

I find that if I do a good job pressing my seams go together perfect every time.

I'm a "pinner" too. I guess I spent too many years making clothing, but I just can't feel good about sending pieces under the needle without pinning. That said, I also ALWAYS remove pins before they get close to the needle. I hit a pin once and really screwed up my machine. Expensive lesson learned. I'm right handed and make sure that I pin with the pin heads to the right so that I can just slip them out as I go. I keep a pretty large pincushion on the right side of my machine too.

There is a trick to butting up seams going opposite directions. If you have the top seam allowance going away from you and the bottom seam allowance coming towards you it should work every time - assuming you were careful in feeling for the "butt". When the machine is feeding fabric through the feed dogs - they take the bottom fabric and "pull it" toward the back of the throat plate. So if you have your seams the way I just said, the machine will help pull the bottom seam allowance toward the top seam allowance for the "butt". This is a very simplified answer and I'm sure there are lots of other tips - but this one works for me. I haven't had problems with seams matching since I started doing it this way.

Oh dear, everything seems to have been said, except that "good enough" can save a lot of fretting,stitch ripping etc.

I'm glad it is going better for you. So can I assume you didn't care for the forked pins? I find them too flimsy.

Limey said it best...."good enough" keeps us sane.

I found the pressing helped, and then just feel for the seams - butting them one into the next and I had pretty good luck with it - so enjoy and have fun! To me it was the most relaxing day of quilting when I found the knack for it and kept up all day - getting 81 blocks done all total with 2" tiny blocks - made 4-patches... now to get them into a quilt someday - but other priorities are looming first. :)