Pinning seams - always?
 

Hi - do you pin All of your seams before stitching together or do you only pin longer seams together?

Is there a generalized cut-off - for instance if you are stitching 2 10" squares together, yes, pin them first, but if you are stitching 2 3"squares or less together it's okay to skip the pinning.

I pin long seams together - in fact I halve and quarter them before joining them - and then match the half and quarter points. I do measure them first to see if they are the same length.

If there are a lot of intersections that are not behaving well, I pin them. If they are behaving very badly, I baste them first before sewing them with small stitches.

Piecing small pieces together, generally I just hold them together.

I'm a big believer in pinning, every 2" or so. So for me a 3" square would probably get two pins, one towards either side, but in general if I'm going to pin I'm going to use 3 pins at a time, so that would be a 6"-ish unit.

But... when I am doing strip piecing of WoF (width of fabric) together, I do that without pinning. After it is subcut though or there is a seam, there is pretty much always a pin. One big reason is I press open and I like to pin down the leading edge so it doesn't get flipped. I use the big long quilt pins but they are well down from the seam line/presser foot, an inch or so down.

I have friends who press to the side or don't press at all and their styles work for them. I've incorporated pinning time into a portable project that I can do at my Tuesday group, or I went to my husband's bowling league the other night, they are getting used to me sitting in the background pinning or hand sewing binding. Can also do while watching tv.

I only pin long seams, like a border. And I pin when there are tricky points to match up.

I very rarely pin, but I often pin the borders

I rarely if every pin seams including binding. I find if I sew slowly as I match edges and pay attention to not stretching fabric everything works out. It probably takes as long as taking the time to pin then racing through the stitching. I think I was probably taught this way as I usually research any educational material before starting anything new. (It's been so long I really don't remember). Anyway, this works for me and I've been told my piecing is really good so I'll keep doing it this way.

i always pin intersections.
on a long seam, i pin and then baste.
once they are all basted accurately, i sew.

I don't always pin the seams. Straight seams are easy enough to sew. Curved seams I pin, a lot. And am gluing the curved seams that give me trouble.

Since discovering how easy it was to glue, I rarely pin. I glue critical matching intersections setting the glue with my iron. I have a bottle of Elmers Washable school glue at my ironing board always. A critical matching intersection trumps length for me. I don't pin/glue small units and have gone as long as 12" with not pinning/gluing as long as there wasn't a critical intersection that needed to match up.

Oops, edited to add, like "sewingitalltogether", I do pin curves. I have not tried gluing them so thanks for that input sewingit.