Video 10: Trimming Dog-Ears on Triangle-Squares

TRANSCRIPT:

When you're sewing triangle or diamonds together, sometimes you'll end up with little points of fabric, commonly known to quilters as dog ears. So let's talk about where they appear and how to get rid of them. If you're using the triangle-square method where you use two same-size triangles, you sew along that center seam and then get ready to press. Now when I'm pressing triangles open, I want to be careful of this bias edge, not to stretch it or distort it. So I'll first open up that triangle and finger-press along that seam. Then I'll take my iron and press that seam open. I like to press from the right side so I can see that I don't have any wrinkles and that I've got a nice smooth seam. But what I end up with once I press those triangles is a unit which looks like this. And you can see, I have these points at the top and the bottom. Those are what quilters affectionately refer to as dog ears. And now's the time to take care of those dog ears before you get ready to join them to another piece. Simply take your scissors and snip those corners off, even with the edge of the triangle. Then your triangle square is perfectly square. You're ready for your next piece to go on, and you sew them together. They match from point to point. So trim off your dog ears, and your pieces will go together much more smoothly.