Make Perfect Pinless Points with Ease

Kimberly Einmo is both a Pfaff Sewing Star and a member of Bernina Sewing Professionals of America. She’s also a Bluprint instructor, teaching the exciting Chain Stars of Mystery Quilt class. She can help anyone create a gorgeous quilt with a surprising and dynamic secondary design, so be sure to sign up. And then join along and learn how to make perfect points without pins in this free video tip.

Hi, I’m Kimberly Einmo. I’m an online instructor for Bluprint.com and I’d like to share with you one of my favorite techniques for perfect pinless points. It’s quick and easy!

So whenever you have a block that you’re assembling that is a basic four patch, no matter what the patches are made up of, there’s a quick and easy way to put them together without the use of pins and you’ll get a perfect point in the center. Let me show you how I do it.

Lay out your four patches. Take the top right patch to you and fold it right sides together and then fold the other one on the right side over on top of the left patch. Pick these patches up and carry them to your sewing machine being careful not to rotate them. Now you’re just going to line up the raw edges, stitch them together using that perfect quarter inch seam allowance. And as you’re stitching be careful not to break the chain between the two units. Keep sewing making sure to keep your raw edges even, holding the ends together with your fingers.

Now, take the units back over to the ironing board making sure not to break the chain between them. Take the unit on the left, fold it away from your body, then give both seams a good press with some steam or a really hot iron to set the seam. Now you’re going to want to open the unit on the right  and press the seam so that it’s going away from your body. And the unit on the left, you’re going to want to press the seam so it’s towards your body. That’s key. That’s the key point here to getting this perfect point without a pin. Now you’re ready to fold the unit right sides together, lining up the intersection right at the middle and we’re going to sew this.

The reason that this works is because we’ve pressed the seams in such a way that the seam that is on top is facing toward the presser foot so as the presser foot moves along the feed dogs and the presser foot works together to smash that together it makes those opposing seams snuggle up and you get that perfect point. So, just line it up, make sure those little seams in the intersection are opposing. Hold it with your left index finger and make sure that that seam doesn’t get flipped back towards you as it’s going under your presser foot. Then keep going all the way to the end. And that’s it; you’ll have a perfect point in the center every time. There you go! A perfect point whenever you’re assembling a four patch without the use of pins.

So if you enjoyed this quick tip I hope you will join me online for my Chain of Stars Mystery Quilt and Magical Jelly Roll Quilts on Bluprint.com. See you there!

And come on back to join Kimberly on the Bluprint blog next Tuesday for another great four patch tip!