What is a scant 1/4" seam???









I hear this question all the time.

It was a question I asked myself

when I started quilting.

In quilting we generally sew our

seams with a 1/4" seam allowance.

And that is where this mystery begins...

My first advice would be to get

a 1/4" seam allowance foot for

your machine. This will help with

your accuracy and it just makes it

so much easier. The photo above

is the foot for my machine, I love

the fabric guide on the bottom right,

it makes it sooo easy. These days,

you can get a 1/4" seam foot for all

sorts of machines, even older models.

Next, you should test to see if your

1/4" foot is accurate. I run the edge of

an index card along my foot and sew a

row of stitches, then I measure to see

if it really is a 1/4". Mine was, if yours

is not you will have to adjust for the

difference. Okay, so now we can sew

a perfect 1/4" seam and that is the heart

of our mystery ~ we don't want that.




WHAT? You may ask? We don't

want perfection?

Yes, we do want perfection and that is

when we have to think of the whole

quilt block and thus, the whole quilt.

We must take into consideration the

fact that we have to press that seam open

and in doing so will lose just a bit of fabric

as we do so. And that is where the scant

1/4" seam comes in.

I must be the only one who doesn't like that guide on the quarter inch foot - I have both, and never use the one with the guide. I prefer to eyeball the 'scant' part, even though I can move the needle over if I wanted.

I don't know why manufacturers don't make a 'scant' foot - all they need to do is to file off a tad - if not, why don't quilters get their DH's to do it for them?

If we sew all our seams just a bit smaller

than 1/4" (and I mean 1 or 2 thread widths

smaller) we will have room to accomodate

the loss of fabric as we fold and go over the

stitching as we press. If you move the fabric

just slightly to the left of the guard, you

will do just fine.




Okay, at this point some of you are

probably saying, "You must be kidding!

Why should I worry about 1 or 2 threads?"




But that is when I will remind you that we

are quilting! In a 12" block we can have many

seams as we put that block together and if we

lose just a bit in every seam, they add up to

a big difference at the end.

I am always hearing from quilters that their

blocks don't turn out to be the correct size.

If you cut correctly and use a scant 1/4" seam,

your accuracy should improve immensely.




Note: On many new machines you can move

the needle easily and this would do make the

seam just a bit smaller than 1/4". Since all

machines are different I can't tell you exactly

how to do this but if you visit the shop where

you purchased your machine, they could tell

you exactly how to do this and that could

make a scant 1/4" seam even easier

I love my 1/4" foot and had to adjust it slightly for the scant 1/4". Now my blocks come out the same size and I wouldn't be ashamed to swap them. Kudos to the inventor :)!

I still haven't got mine right but will keep trying.

I enjoyed your post with the information and humor! It really makes sense. Thank you for sharing!

I brought a seam guide to screw onto my machine. You can get them for under 5 bucks at Amazon. You just screw them into the hole on the side of your machine. I also use electric tape too. I will use anything that will make my seams perfect. The seam ripper is not my friend.