hi I'm Marci Baker of Alicia's attic here to share with you the clear view of quilting when we're sewing our quilts we want to sew with a quarter inch seam allowance the quarter inch I was taught to measure and mark with graph paper on my sewing machine back in the 80s and that works okay except the machine I was sewing with the straight stitch was a slight zigzag and therefore my machine took a bit of a bite bigger than a quarter inch and I had to rethink how I was going to get my blocks to fit because they were always too small and what that means is when I was done sewing and pressing I had only removed a quarter inch from the front of the fabric that's what designers have written instructions for so with that what I do now is I sew a scant quarter I have a better machine that has a straight straight stitch and by sewing with a scant quarter I have enough fabric to roll around the thickness of the thread and therefore I've only removed a quarter inch from the front of the fabric and therefore my blocks fit what the designer has written instructions for so let me show you how I mark a scant quarter on my sewing machine I mark my scant quarter inch on the bed of my sewing machine using a physical stop here I'm using cue tools sewing edge which is my favorite because it's flexible it'll fit any machine it's repositionable with its repositionable adhesive it's thicker than two layers of fabric so it stops my fabric as I'm pushing it into and guiding it to the foot and my it's thin enough that the pins will flow right over also if I have ears of fabric sticking out it will flow right over those so it makes it very easy to guide and get a consistent quarter inch it lasts a long time also as long as I use a piece that I don't have to remove every time I want to replace my bobbin so in this case I have it on this accessory case and it's perfect gives me exactly what I need for a very consistent scant quarter inch having a sewing edge out here in front of the foot is going to give me something to guide by well before my needle so I have a chance to adjust my fabric makes the adjustments I need and then continue sewing like if I'm right at the needle and things aren't right I may have to stop and re so something I don't want to put my sewing edge over feed dogs and I don't want to put it on any deep printed decals on my machine and I've seen people try and put it way back here behind the needle there's no need to have it but right here in front because that's going to guide my fabric some machines have top-loading bobbins such as this one here where you remove this cover and it'd be nice to be able to just put a small piece on the bobbin cover and before I do that I want to make sure I've pushed this bobbin cover because it's kind of loose all the way to the right before I place my sewing edge and then here I've placed a piece out in front of it one thing about this particular machine I have set the Machine so that the needle is not in the center I've actually moved it over to a 5.5 measurement and I'm going to get my straight stitch with my needle over to the right and then I have the scant quarter marked with my sewing edge by having the needle to the right and my regular foot on I'm using all my feed dogs to pull my fabric through and if you've ever had problems with your seams narrowing at the end just as you last push those pieces in then at by moving the needle and using all your feed dogs to pull through you'll have a better chance of getting that seam straight here I have two pieces of sewing edge one right here by the needle and it's not over any feed dogs and it's short enough that it won't cover this screw in case I want to remove the plate also I have one out in front this is the one that I tend to guide by because it gets my fingers further away from the needle but sometimes I use this one both of them make it very easy to get a scant quarter on my feather weight the package for sewing edge comes with instructions on how to apply and mark for a scant quarter inch but I prefer to use my key tools corner cut because it has a scant quarter marked on it it's more durable than the paper we're going to turn it over and use the backside where we have a laser cut line the one with the quarter - that's our scant quarter we'll put the tip of the needle in this groove not in this big hole and we're going to mark a scant quarter on our sewing machine place the tool hand turn the needle so that the tip of the needle goes into the scant quarter inch line right through here the tip of the needle is right there you don't have to turn very hard and do not put your foot on the pedal and then we're going to look at the edge of the tool right here we need it parallel to our feed dogs to the openings of the plate once we have that lined up we're going to put the presser foot down that holds the corner cut in place now to place the sewing edge we're going to remove a piece of sewing edge from the packaging and being careful not to touch the adhesive side we're going to place the left edge of our sewing edge against the right edge of our corner cut and you may need to put pressure down on your corner cut if you have a curved surface here once you have it aligned the left edge to the right edge then we're going to put some pressure here on the sewing edge that will keep the lint and dust from getting underneath it then we're going to lift the needle raise the presser foot and now from our needle to our sewing edge is a scant quarter inch let's check our scant quarter inch seam allowance by sewing three two inch white strips together we will be able to tell whether or not we have the correct measurement notice this piece of fabric under my presser foot that's called a starti stoppi it basically allows me to chain piece everything that I sew through my machine and it's holding my threads for me right there at the beginning I'm going to align my raw edges of my fabric and I'm going to push them up against the sewing edge and I'm going to slowly feed that in I'm going to use my left pointer finger to push up against the sewing edge making sure that my fabric is aligned and that I don't have a gap here and I don't run over the edge of the sewing edge it just runs right up against it and my finger can tell that the fabric is right there so I'm going to sew this and just guide the fabric up here in front next to the sewing edge rather than looking here at the needle because it's already taken care of there by being aligned up here now I'm done and so I'm going to sew onto my stopping clip my work off and here you can see that straight scant quarter-inch seam well we'll check it in a minute and see how it does here we have the three strips that I sewed together and they should measure 5 inches they were 2 inches each and then - a half inch for each seam we have 1 2 3 4 5 inches and that is exactly how why they're supposed to measure with a scant quarter since I've learned to sew with a scant quarter inch on my sewing machine especially using cue tools sewing edge my sewing takes a lot less time and it's consistent and precise my blocks match what they should match for the designers instructions and you can have that also look for cue tools sewing edge at your local quilt shop or you can visit our website Alicia's adhikam I've shared with you today lots of tips that will hopefully make your quilting that much easier and it's all part of the clear view of quilting brought to you by Alicia's attic and I'm Marci Baker you