Simply "Scant-ilous"

As February approaches, I have a number of folks registered to participate in the inaugural Quilt Store Next Door Block of the Month (hereunto referred to as BOM) program.  I'm SUPER excited about this BOM for two reasons.  First, this is actually MY first BOM project!  Yes, I am a BOM newby!  In all my years of quilting, I've always wanted to do a BOM; I figured heck, anyone can make ONE block a month, right?  Of course, by the time I'd realize the local quilt shops had a BOM, it would be June, and who has time to complete six blocks in one month to catch up?!  Not me!  Hence, I never did any at all.

Secondly, the BOM program I've chosen is actually a Craftsy BOM from 2012 designed by Amy Gibson for Craftsy.  It is a 20 block sampler that will teach us TWO NEW techniques each month!  Some blocks are very traditional while others are wonky and wonderful with a modern, improvisational feel.  I'm stoked to learn some new techniques myself, so I'm ready to get started!

In all my excitement, I was talking to one of our registrants and she asked me "what exactly is a scant 1/4" seam?  How's it different from a regular 1/4" seam?"

Hmmm....I know the answer, but I didn't know how to verbalize it to her, so I clumsily explained the best I could and decided that maybe a few other people had the same question.  Let's demystify the "scantilous" scant 1/4" seam.

My machine has a very narrow 1/4" piecing foot which will give me a perfect scant 1/4" seam if I simply run just slightly outside that raw edge of the fabric, but maybe your presser foot is different, so let's figure this out.

Why do we use a scant 1//4" seam?  After we sew our two pieces of fabric together, what do we do?  Well, we iron those babies right open to see how beautifully our fabric choices are getting along.  When we open that seam and roll that fabric back a bit, we lose a negligible amount of our block, now making our block smaller, be it ever so slightly, but smaller than we originally calculated.  

To account for that we use a scant 1/4" seam.  This simply means it is just shy of a full-bodied 1/4" seam.  So if your machine has a 1/4" foot, don't follow the fabric edge, but instead, ride just a little to the right of  that fabric edge, and you should be fine.  Always measure the distance from your presser foot edge to your needle to make sure your 1/4" foot is accurate.  The 1/4" foot on my old machine was not accurate and that messed me up several times.  If you're using your regular sewing foot, take a measuring gauge the next time you sit down to sew and measure from the edge of your foot to your needle, and find out that distance so you can adjust accordingly to be just slightly less than 1/4".   One word of advice: whenever possible always complete your piecing project on the same machine as you started it on simply for the sake of calibration.  If you sew some of your blocks on one machine with one 1/4" foot and then finish your blocks on a different machine/foot, you may be in for an unpleasant surprise when your try to fit your blocks together.  

See, that was easy, wasn't it?  What is a scant 1/4" seam?  It's a seam that is actually slightly less than a full 1/4" seam.

Why do we use it?  In an attempt to keep our finished block size as true as possible without losing much block when we iron our seam open.

See... it wasn't so scantilous after all!