Janice McC

Good Morning, PamelaOry. First breathe, release and ahhh. No panicking allowed or necessary!

The 1/4 inch seam is elusive for a lot of people. Everyone's machine is different, and there's no one right way. GramE's idea is a good one. I'd try that first. Put your needle down and measure approx 1/4 inch out and align some painters tape along that line. (Some people use an old credit card which has a little height so the fabric can butt up against it, or even a small stack of easily movable post it notes.) It needs to be as straight as you can make it. Then take two long strips, say exactly 2 1/2 inches wide, and sew with the edges of the fabric on that line. Stop after several inches and measure the seam you've sewn with a hard acrylic ruler placed on top of your fabric, not a measuring tape or the lines of your cutting mat. Is it 1/4 inch? Is it slightly less, a thread or two? If it's a thread or two less, you've probably found your "scant" 1/4 inch seam but the way to be sure is to open the fabrics, press and measure the size with an acrylic ruler. The piece should now measure 4 1/2 inches across. If not, repeat the process of setting the tape or credit card (or wing it using your eye if moving the tape is tedious) sewing slightly inside or outside the previous line until you find where you need to put your fabric on your machine to get the 1/4 inch or scant 1/4 to make your pieces come out to 4 1/2 inches. It may take several tries to find it. It may take 50 tries but once you've got the spot, practice, over and over, sewing with scraps until you are fairly confident you can hit that mark nearly every time. It's totally practice.

One other thing. For me, I think of the quarter inch line as the line on which I fold fabric after I've sewn them together. For me, it's almost never the sewing line. The seam takes up space so when you fold; a thread or two may be "lost" in the fold. I try to always use a scant seam. It just works for me. Usually. And I'm fanatic about measuring. I measure most pieces after sewing and pressing. If I'm making a block using lots of pieces, if each one is off even a 1/16 of an inch, there is no way my block will turn out the right size. So I measure as I go and if a seam is off, I fix it.

So don't panic, just practice your 1/4 inch seam. The more you do it, the easier it will become and it will be second nature in the not too distant future.