Machine Minute: Picture Perfect Pillow Corners

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, I'm Jennifer and here with another Machine Minute brought to you by Baby Lock and the Symphony machine. Sewing home dec is a great way to fall in love with fabrics and have fun decorating your home. But sometimes when you make pillows, do you find that you get these rabbit ears at the top corners? Little pointy ends that you wish you could tuck in or make a little smoother and more straight across, and why is that even when you're sewing straight? Well it has to do with when you stuff your pillow it makes these rabbit ears pop up. I can show you a trick for getting rid of those rabbit ears. Now, when you're sewing your pillows, chances are you're using either a 1/4" or 1/2" seam allowance and I've just drawn one with a 1/4" seam allowance here. But you're using that seam allowance, sewing to a point at the corner where you're seam allowance is equal, so here I pivoted at a 1/4" and then draw stitching lines for another 1/4" seam along this side. That's perfectly square, but this is what's causing that rabbit ear to happen. I'll show you another way to pivot at the corners. What I do is put a dot at 3/8 inch. I'm using a 1/4" seam allowance. It's just in about an 1/8" of where I was on that opposite corner. Then I draw two diagonal stitches. I know it seems counter intuitive that you're going to cut the point off and still end up with a perfect point on your pillow, but trust me it works once you turn it right side out. So, from that point then at each side of my pillow I draw a little line with a fabric marker that's at the quarter inch seam allowance if that's what I'm using. And then I taper in to that diagonal line. I'll show you how that works. If this was just my pillow top that I was going to be stitching on, I've drawn my dot here using my acrylic ruler, and I would use a fabric marking pen. So I've placed that dot exactly where I want my pivot point to be. Then I'll just put two diagonal stitches on either side of that dot. I've already got my quarter inch seam allowance at each midpoint, so I'm simply going to rotate the fabric and use my ruler and they'll be a little bit of an angle and I'll just draw what will become my seam line and also right on that line. And I'll do the same thing on this side. And that way when I sit down to sew, I've got that corner where you can see it tapers in ever so slightly. Those two diagonal stitches and a slight taper will make sure your pillow corners are rabbit ears-free, and you have perfect corners every time.