January 09, 2012

Lone Star Quilt: All Strips Cut


Lone Star Strip Sets All Cut
Today I finished cutting all of my Lone Star Strip Sets.  Don't they look nice laid out like this?  The next step in the directions is to mark off 1/4" and use standing pins to ensure the seams butt together properly.  The thought of that will need to simmer in my mind a little because it sounds tricky.  The directions actually say that I should sew it with a large stitch length, check it and if everything looks good re-sew it with a tighter stitch length.  That sounds like solid advice.
As for getting everything lined up though, I'm not sure about that so I picked up some of this.  Has anyone ever used it before?  It's 1/4" Quilter's Tape.  I was looking for Tiger Tape that I hear about talked about on quilting shows, but this is what my local store had.  I think it will work out just fine.
Quilters Tape for Marking 1/4" seam allowance offsets
*** January 11th Update:  Don't use the 1/4" quilters tape on this project.  It's bad!  Why?  Well you see you put the tape on one strip, and then mark your diamond joints with standing pins and sew.  But the tape does something.  It holds the diamonds so they can not stretch, not even a little bit.  Why is this bad?  Because the second strip the one you are sewing to, will stretch!  Even with the most gentle handling the fabric without the tape will stretch a little bit and then everything goes bad.  If you forego the tape; as you handle the two strips pinning them together and lining up they do stretch a little bit, but that's okay because they stretch and move together.  I suppose you could tape both strips but that seems like a waste of tape and the directions on my package were very clear not to stitch through the tape which could happen accidently if you had it on both strips.  I am glad to have the tape as I've wanted it for a while and will just save it for other projects.  Not this one.

3 comments:

QuiltSue said...

Reading ahead, my instructions say to mark those 1/4" places with a pencil dot, but I think using tape sounds great for the points. I've never used that make before, but can't see why it would be a problem.

Vicki said...

You rLone Star strips look great, I can hardly wait to see them all put together. I have not used the 1/4" quilters tape but it makes sense that it should work.

stitchinpenny said...

Gorgeous. This is coming together so well.