Postage Stamp Question
 

Okay, I'm finally going to start my postage stamp quilt. I read somewhere today that all seams in a block should be sewn in the same direction. I had planned on sewing seams in alternating direction to nest seams. Your thoughts please.

Check this out it might save you a lot of time if you do it this way. I saw it on pinterest today.(very timely)
http://www.sewmamasew.com/2009/10/el...-tiny-squares/

I made a postage stamp when I was about 20, never knew about nesting and it came out beautiful

I'm so glad you posted this thread, as I knew I would catch your attention some how.. I wanted to PM you, but your inbox is full..
Love to see what the answer s to your question, anyway.
Barri

Thanks for the link to use the interfacing, it sounds very good.

Hey Barri! Cleaned out my mailbox, I had a ton of mail in there :)

Thanks for the link MaryQuilting. There was a discussion about this method a while back. Some members thought the interfacing would make a quilt too rigid, but would be great for wall hangings, totes, etc.

Lynnie, nice to know that nesting didn't matter. If I miss my target I won't fret ;)

I'll check in tomorrow gang. I'm going to bed, I feel a cold coming on.

I'm going to have to try this. I've always wanted to make a postage stamp quilt, and things just get in my way. I'm not good at setting priorities for quilting.

I saw this method demonstrated on Simply Quilts years ago, but never thought to apply it to small pieces such as this. BTW, thanks for the link. It's a very good tutorial with great directions and pictures.

Very Cool! Thank you for posting this!!

When I did a PS quilt, I did it in columns. I joined 40, 2.5" squares into a long row. Whenever I'd get a free moment, I'd add a few squares. I'd have long strips about 80" long. When I had enough strips, I laid them on my design board and changed around the strips until I was pleased with it. Then I pressed the strips...alternating the pressing...press strip up, next strip down and so on. Then I joined the strips, nesting the seams.
Worked great.
One caution.......be extra careful pressing the strips, or they may warp.

Good luck.

Im collecting 2 inch blocks, will have to save this, thanks for sharing.

Looks like I'll be nesting. Thanks all!

Wondering ... if I wanted to make a usable quilt (so don't want interfacing) ... could I use freezer paper then pull it off the back after sewing??

Hmmm ... may have to give that a try.

I just finished the first 1/4 of my postage stamp sized (1" finished squares) Trip Around the World. I strip pieced it and it's turning out great. I didn't worry about how I ironed, I just ironed a lot and it's all fine. 40 fabrics, 80 rows in the whole quilt for a total of 6400 pieces in the finished quilt (hopefully sometime this spring!) 1600 pieces in this quarter, which is a Christmas gift.....

Just do what works best for you.Or do you N E E D a rule to work by.

I've been working on a Postage Stamp quilt using 1" finished squares. Mine is a checkerboard pattern with every other square being white (Kona Snow) so I did blocks of 10 squares by 10 with seams pressed toward the colored squares. I have found I get beautiful results by pressing each row after it's added. This is easy for me to do as I have a little pressing station set up next to my sewing machine so all I have to do is swivel my chair. Sewing station is a wooden TV tray with batting and a cover over it. I also like to have an extra piece of disposable fabric over the cover as I sometimes use starch or Clear Press and over time the area where I iron the most will discolor and become brittle. When it's discolored I just rotate the cloth or if there's no clear space left, toss it.

I had to smile reading the description of "small pieces" and realizing they are talking about 2" squares. After you've worked with 1.5 inch squares for a while even a 2" square looks big ...

This is fabulous! I have some fabric from my mother's clothes she wore in her last years and have wanted to make mini-quilts for my siblings. This will be a fantastic method! Thank you for sharing the link!

I made such a quilt as a millenium quilt with 2000 squares. I used the gridded Pellon (?) interfacing and sewed according to the directions. It worked great and saved me much frustration, offering accurate sewing and little problem matching seams.

Thanks for sharing the PS tutorial.

For some reason, I can't find the article on sewmamasew.. Is this about using the Pellon iron on grid? I started sewing the squares as leaders, and enders, and will probably will make them into bigger squares instead of doing them in strips.

Same here, except I realized after the fact that I was not precise on sewing a couple of the seams, so there are a few wonky patches. This is my advice, you need to be extremely precise when sewing the seams!

Anita