Originally Posted by
Lena1952
For those pesky tips that get eaten by the machine, I simply trim off a small amount of the corner and have not had one eaten since. These are the dogs ears you will trim off later so you are not losing anything important. I still have to trim those a bit after pressing as I only tKe off enough to give my machine something more to grab onto.
When I first started quilting it was before rotary rulers and I would always trim off my triangle ends, sometimes you would do a funky cut so they would line up with the opposing piece better. I should keep that in mind, it's easy enough to do when your stacks are there all nice. In this case I'm just sort of not thinking through the project, I was given a big box of precut squares and my first step was to sort out the metallics and cut them in half, I'm just sort of winging it. I didn't even know what the finished block size would be until I made one -- that's just wild and crazy coming from me.
The nesting technique works well, I have to watch that block that is being sewn on the opposite side just because I'm not used to it, but that's better than having issues with every single start getting sucked in. I found as I went on I could turn the blocks around and keep the pins on the top for a better view.
In that picture, the white triangle was my pattern to cut a couple of the triangles that came from strips instead of squares, but I like the idea of the little bits of paper. Another one of my must have secret tools for quilting is parchment paper I get from the dollar store, that would work lovely for that or as a leader (with a note or a row indicator or something) even...