Thoughts on cutting off tips (dog ears)
 

Sorry, I hate that term 'dog ears' in cutting something off, it sounds like doing something inhumane --- I'll call them 'tips' from HST etc.

These are my thoughts - I have always and I mean always cut off the tips after ironing the HST etc. open. But, with my last quilt, I got to thinking about it. If there isn't a lot of small intersections or light fabric against dark, I wondered what the difference would be just leaving them on.

The pain of cutting them off is that if you don't iron the seam exactly right, and then try to fix it after you have cut off the tips when you are assembling the block, you might as well as throw the HST out because now you have a gap in the corner. When I'm ironing out the seams of 120 HST's sometimes the seam is ironed just a little off and then I have to take the time to make yet another one, because since I cut the 'tip' off, there is no longer a sharp corner (instead there is a 'bite' out of it). Ok, that may be a whine, but there you go!

So, in doing an experiment, I made two small quilts (the cats like to lay on them). One I cut off all the tips from the HST's. On the other, I left them all on. There was no difference in the finished product. So now I'm in the field of no longer cutting them off. Honestly, I see no difference since a seam is a seam and I certainly don't cut my seams down. I just watch that I always iron to the darker fabric.

What field are you in? Cutting off all the tips (dog ears) or leaving them on, or half and half?

Dog ears don't bother me. And sometimes they help line up the pieces

Mine end up coming off when I sliver-trim the block to size.

I don't remove the tips if they fall in the seam width when I press, only if they end up sticking out where they'd run into the guide on my machine's 1/4" foot.

If I had a foot without that guide I wouldn't bother trimming them even if they did stick out.

I just leave them 99% of the time.

I was thinking that others would say, no they must be removed! When I think of all the time I spent removing them in the past... I feel a breath of fresh air now :D

If I use the Accuquilt the tips are cut off every piece. If I do the cutting I leave them on. When learning to make a quilt I decided it was my choice to cut them off or not.

I'm with SBG - I'm not sure I would put the effort in if I didn't already trim the blocks, but I'm still pretty new to the game. :-)

And I'm with Gemm and SBG. I always oversize my HST's and trim using my BlocLoc rulers. So the ears go whether I want them to or not.

The reason I normally don't trim all my hsts, is because these are cut out of two jelly rolls sewn together on both sides and cut with a strip tube ruler which cuts them to the actual size without needing trimming.