The Pin Is Mightier Than The Feed dog!!
I know. I wrote about the importance of pinning before, but it keeps coming up in quilts that we work on and in Q&A sessions during our presentations.
A Weighty Subject
Picture the center of a quilt being attached to a border. This happens all of the time. We have a large, pieced, heavy quilt center as compared to a much lighter, single strip for the border. We put it under the sewing machine's presser foot and expect that they will both move at the same speed.
What happens if the heavy quilt center is on the bottom and the border is on top? Answer: they both move at relatively the same speed, although the border on top will move slower because the feed dogs that are moving the fabrics through the sewing machine are on the bottom where the heavy, quilt center is located.
Now let's do the other side of the quilt! The light border is now on the bottom and the heavy center is on top, away from the feed dogs. Now the border goes zipping through the feed dogs while the quilter is fighting with the heaver, quilt center. Result: lettuce leaf.
Help Is On The Way!?
The sewing machine industry has been innovative in this regard. They have developed "feed dogs" for the presser foot. They go by many names, based on the manufacturer. "Walking Foot" and "Even Feed Foot" are a couple of examples. Although these have helped a great deal, they haven't totally eliminated the need to pin the fabrics together.
Solution
Thus, the need to pin your fabrics so that they move together, in unison, through the sewing machine from one end of the fabric to the other. To quote Ruth: "Nothing replaces pinning."
And, while you're at it, remove those pins at the last second to get their maximum benefit of keeping the fabric moving as one from one end to the other!
Caveat
If you are finding the fabric bunching up at the pins, it shows that the two fabrics are not moving at the same speed. Place your pins closer together and endeavor to keep the fabric moving at the same speed. Don't just pull the pins, thereby releasing the pent-up pressure as if you had never used the pins in the first place.
