pennyhal2

I always press the seams to the side. However, I notice that the seam then has a tiny hump where I press it to the side. I think that this tiny fold seems to cause one side to be a tiny bit smaller and the other side to be bigger. This seems to change the size of the block. Does anyone press the seams open? Or make the patch a tiny bit bigger and trim down to size?

sewingpup

I rarely press seams open. I actually like the little hump, if you are trying to stitch in the ditch, that little hump makes it easier to do as I like to rub my needle on the hump like just driving your car wheel along the curb. Yes, the thread and fold do take up a tiny bit of space. That is why I measure the final size of the block and see if I need to use a slightly bigger or smaller seam.

tallchick

I press seams open 99.99% of the time. My blocks and quilt lay flatter, be sure to shorten your stitch length!

Three Dog Night

I do press seams to side unless joining blocks will make it hard to quilt like on a pinwheel then I press the seams open.

Iceblossom

I press open almost all the time, and I personally believe the "to the side" is a leftover from hand sewing and from times when thinks like electric irons were not available. About the only time I don't is when doing curved seams like with Grandmother's Fan or Drunkard's Path.

Is a personal decision, but I think pressing open is/will be more popular with the machine quilting we have nowadays. I should mention that I find it necessary/helpful to use a small needle (typically I piece with a 10) and a small stitch length. I'm not sure how the newer machines measure stitches, but I use a 1.85-1.90 on my Bernina and not the 2.5 it defaults to when turning on. Open pressing or not, I feel the small stitches are good/required any time you are doing modern strip piecing techniques and sub-cutting through previous rounds of stitching.

For some of my reasons for pressing open, I like having one rule to follow. Pressing to the side is generally press to the darker fabric, that isn't always possible when you are putting together two white pieces for example. And then there are other construction considerations on why/when not pressing to the dark side is used. Sure, it's cool when the seams twirl around, but (again) I use a small needle and a small stitch and don't want to take out any stitches at all (plus I can't really see them). I feel I am more accurate with my seams, being able to meet the seam and the seam allowances -- I also pin a lot, every leading seam edge or every 2". A lot of my friends get great results hardly pinning at all, but not me. BTW, when I pin I am pretty far down the seam allowance so my pins don't go under the 1/4" quilter's foot I usually use.

Some people feel that pressing seams open is more time consuming and fiddly than pressing them to the side -- I don't see a great deal of difference when I am sewing with my friends. I have learned things like I keep my sets of units chain pieced until after I press, the running thread helps keep the units in line. Also, while I don't use starch, why I insist on my fabric being nicely pressed and crisp is because it helps the seams stand up to be opened flat.

I also do a lot of "cut big and trim down" techniques. 20 or so years ago I was not very complimentary on what I then called "fabric wasteful techniques". I find the time I spent being very accurate is about the amount of time I spend trimming, and I get better results with trimming. Not all shapes and/or techniques work well because of geometry stuff, so no "one rule" to help me. Various shapes, however, do have their own rules. This week for the Bonnie Hunter Mystery we will have a "triangle in a square" block. In that case I cut the triangle as directed, but make the "skinny" side triangles larger and trim them down.

Onebyone

I press open. I bought this pressing tool and it is wonderful for pressing seams open. It comes in different lengths.

https://www.missouriquiltco.com/prod...r&_ss=e&_v=1.0


It was at a terrific sale price at one of the four hour flash sales during the Birthday Bash sale and I thought I'd try it. I'm so glad I did.

Stitchnripper

I also press open. I get a better end result.

quiltsfor

I always press to the side, I think pressing the seam open weakens the seams. I've seen quilts that have laddered threads between the seams, the only thing holding the fabric together in spots, when the seams have been pressed open. Probably due to the threads stretching or the fabric shrinking more than the threads.

charlottequilts

I am currently assembling one, all seams open, where one section is all 1.5” squares, with white in the alternating squares. That’s a misery of seam intersections to match on the horizontal rows.

If one is missed, you can see it from space.

I somehow thought I would be using glue, but on my first attempt, I used way too much and had to perform a serious rescue. So many intersections had slipped a bit, anyway, that I didn’t think my gluing skills were at a level to continue.

So now I’m back to basting the intersections. 🤢

I generally like pressing open on HSTs and geese, but this, not so much. Pretty sure I’m missing some big idea here. . .

hugs, charlotte

dunster

I press to the side. I use lightweight thread for piecing (Bottomline or equivalent) so the thread doesn't take up much space. My units are just as accurate as they would be if I pressed the seam open. I think the seam is stronger when pressed to one side, and I do a lot of ditch stitching in addition to free motion. There is no ditch is you press the seams open.