It’s week 2 of the Gobble Gobble Sew Along and we’re piecing our cute little turkey together this week! Today I’m sharing a few tips to keep in mind as you get sewing.

 

 

Whenever I sew together tiny pieces, I like to press the seams open. Pressing the seams open helps reduce bulk at the intersections and your turkey will lay flatter. I also feel that it improves accuracy when you’re dealing with such small pieces of fabric. As you can see from the photo below, I didn’t press every seam open. If I have a larger seam and it makes more sense to press to the side, I’m happy to do that, instead. 🙂

Remember to keep the seams at 1/4″. Whenever I deal with sewing tiny pieces together, I naturally start to decrease my seam allowance. I have to remind myself that even though the fabric pieces are tiny, the seams still need to be 1/4″. Even as I was piecing my turkey together a couple days ago, I realized that my feather units were a little too long because my seams were too small. It’s an easy fix though–just resew the seam at the correct 1/4″.

As you finish up your turkey, don’t be concerned if the finished size isn’t exactly 18.5″ x 18.5″. There are so many seams in there that it’s hard to keep everything right on target! Just keep the pillow front as is (don’t trim it) for the quilting we’ll do next week. It’s likely that the panel will be a touch smaller after quilting (quilting usually causes it to shrink a bit) and that’s totally fine. We’ll square everything up after quilting and it really doesn’t matter if your pillow cover ends up being a bit smaller than the suggested 18″ x 18″.

This week, I’m giving away two bundles of fat quarters from the new Shine On fabric line from Bonnie and Camille, so don’t forget to tag your photos on instagram with the hashtag #gobblesewalong!

Happy sewing!

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