Chain Piecing

Sometimes in our quilt patterns, there are lots of repetitive pieces that we have to put together, and we can make that go a lot quicker if we use something called chain piecing. Chain piecing is where you simply stitch right off of one piece directly onto another piece and you form a chain while you're piecing. Lots of people think you can only chain piece if you're doing a, say, just squares together or just rectangles together, but I'm gonna show you how you can chain piece doing, of course, squares and rectangles, but you can also chain piece when you're making flying geese, and half-square triangles, and square-in-a-square units, and so I'm gonna show you how to do all of those things. So when you're chain piecing, you kind of want to do things in steps. So the first step is obviously to cut out your pieces. So these are gonna be my squares that just need to be sewn together right sides together. So I have them all cut out first. The next step would be to make sure that everything is aligned the way that I want it to, so obviously, right sides together. And then these are fairly small pieces, so I don't necessarily need a pin, but when I'm making my stacks, so if I'm chain piecing, there's maybe only four of them here, but say I was going to chain piece like 30 of them, I would want to cut all 30, position all 30, and pin all 30, and then stitch all of them so it'll make it go much quicker. So that pin is going to help me sort of keep track of which fabrics go together so when I'm picking them up I can just grab my pin and take it over to the machine. So I'm gonna get all four of these pinned so it's just right sides together. Right like so. Right sides together right like so. Now I can take these over to my machine and I'm going to chain piece them. So I'm still going to be piecing using my standard quarter-inch seam allowance. I'm gonna go ahead and start sewing. And I'm gonna take my pin out as I get up to it. And then when I finish one, I'm gonna stop with my needle down because that's going to raise my presser foot just a little bit. And I'm gonna slide the next one under there and continue stitching. Take out my pin. Stitch right off the edge. Lower that presser foot. Bring in my next one. Continue on. Lower that press, or lower the needle so it raises that presser foot, and keep stitching. So chain piecing is just stitching right off of one, right onto another. Go ahead and clip my threads here. So you can see that I have this nice, long chain of all of my pieces that I have stitched. So I have saved time because I'm not having to sew one and then clip those threads and then take it over and set it down, press it. And I'm also saving a little bit of thread because rather than having an inch or two thread tail between each one of my pieces, now I've only got one tiny little stitch. Once I have my entire chain sewn, I can go ahead and just clip them apart, either using my rotary cutter or my snips, and I have all of my pieces ready to go. So that's the basics of how you chain piece with your, just your standard squares or rectangles. So you can still chain piece if you're making something like a flying geese unit. So if you're not familiar with a flying geese unit, you can make these several different ways. My preferred way of making them is with one rectangle and two squares. So you have your rectangle and you have a square that you have marked with a diagonal line from corner to corner. And you place your square right sides together on your rectangle with the diagonal line going from the bottom corner up to the center. I'm gonna go ahead and place a pin, not only to hold my fabric, but to also make it easier to pick up. And of course, just like with my squares and rectangles, I want to streamline my process. So I have cut everything out first, I have marked everything first, now I'm going to pin everything, then I will sew everything. So we'll just do three or four of them here so I can show you how this works. Right like so. Put a pin in. And now when you're sewing your squares and rectangles together, you're just sewing right along the edge so it's easy to start at the edge and not have to worry about your fabric sort of getting caught underneath the presser foot. But sometimes it's very hard to start sewing at a point because your needle might try to push that point down into the throat plate of your machine. So anytime you're sewing something that you have the option to start on a straight edge, always start on that straight edge. So I'm gonna start stitching up here rather than down here at the point. So I'm gonna take these over to my machine. And with a flying geese unit, you stitch on that drawn line, so I'm just going to stitch right on that drawn line. Go ahead and stitch right off of it. Lower that needle, raise that presser foot, and continue stitching right like that. You just go right off of one right onto the other. One more. Go ahead and clip my threads. And I can cut apart my chain. So it doesn't matter what it is that you are sewing, whether it's squares and rectangles or flying geese, you can still use chain piecing. So here now, if I were going to continue on with my flying geese unit, I would cut all of my chains apart, I would trim this to 1/4-inch seam allowance, press it up, and then go ahead and add the other side onto my flying geese, and I would chain piece that side just like I did the first side. So very easy to do when all you have to do is stitch one side of your square rectangle or of your flying geese. You can still do this though if you have to stitch both sides of something, so when you're stitching a half square triangle. So when you're making half square triangles, generally you have a square that you start with that has a diagonal line drawn right down the center. And you're gonna stitch 1/4 inch on either side of that line. So I'm gonna go ahead and pin a couple of these so I can show you that you can still chain piece, even if you have to spin it around and stitch on the other side. So I'll go ahead and do about three of these. I'm pinning on both sides, just because this is a bigger square than the first squares and rectangles that I was working with and I want to make sure that it doesn't shift as I spin it around. So we'll just do three of these and I'll show you how to chain piece your half square triangles. So I'm gonna take these over to the machine. Now I have my diagonal line drawn down the center and I'm stitching 1/4 inch on either side of it. Go ahead and stitch right off. Still gonna go ahead and lower the needle to raise that presser foot, and I'm just bringing the next one right up to it. So it doesn't really matter if the two points or the tips of one piece overlaps with the next one because I'm stitching over here, so I'm stitching off sort of the angle edge of the square that I'm stitching. So it's not like I'm gonna be sewing two of my squares unintentionally together. Then I'm just gonna continue on. Then when I get to the end of all of the ones that I've chain pieced and I don't have to go any further, I'm gonna go ahead and do a couple stitches to make sure that I am off the edge of my fabric. I'm just gonna raise that presser foot and I'm gonna spin my whole chain around. Make sure my thread is into my presser foot and ready to go, and now I can just stitch right down the other side. Still 1/4 inch away from the seam allowance, or away from that line that I drew. And stitch right off of one, right onto the other. If you have a really long chain, you might find that as your fabric gets pulled up, some of your squares are flipped the wrong direction. You can just flip it right back over and continue stitching right off of one, right onto the other. So when I'm chain piecing something where I have to stitch on both sides that's what I like to call ladder piecing just because you've stitched down one side and then back down the other, kind of like a ladder. But now you have your half square triangle is ready to go. They are still connected. So you can just come in with either your rotary cutter or your snips, cut those apart. For a half square triangle you cut on your drawn line. You would take out your pin, press them, and now you have half square triangles. So you've made a bunch of half square triangles much quicker because you have chain pieced them. Then the last one I'm gonna show you because it is one that I don't think people think of being able to chain piece is a square in a square unit. So I'm just gonna do two of these. So when you're doing a square in square, you start with one large square and four small squares. The small squares are going to go in the corners and we're gonna stitch across a drawn line. So I'm gonna go ahead and draw my line on the back of my small squares. So again, just like in the beginning when I mentioned streamlining the process of chain piecing, you want to cut everything first, then mark everything, then stitch everything. So it'll just go a little bit quicker that way. So go ahead and mark two more. Right like there, and one more here. So this is gonna be a little bit trickier of a chain piece, just because there's more space between the pieces when you're stitching them. And you'll see what I mean as soon as we get it up onto the machine. But so for a square in a square, you start with your large square and you have two small squares on either side to start. So I'm gonna go ahead and pin those in place, right like so. Bring in my next one, do the same thing. Put my small squares in the corners. And now I can chain piece these. So I'll take them over to my machine. Again, I'm stitching on my drawn line. So I'm gonna stitch on that line. Make sure I'm one or two stitches off of it and then bring up my next one. So this is what I mean by there's more space in between where you want to stitch, which means more of your pieces have to overlap each other, but you're not actually gonna be stitching these two together because we're only stitching right here on this drawn line. So even though those pieces are overlapping, they're not going to be stitched together. When you're done with your long chain, with the half square triangles we were able to just spin it around, this one, because we have to travel such a long distance, you want to go ahead and just clip your threads, spin your chain around, and then start back on the other side. So we're gonna go ahead and stitch on the drawn line. Make sure you're one or two stitches off of it, and then you would bring up your next piece. Always have that needle down so it raises the presser foot just slightly, and then stitch on your drawn line. And continue doing that for however long your chain is. So whether you're doing square in a square and your ladder piecing them together, or you're doing your half square triangles, or you're doing your flying geese, or you're doing just standard piecing with squares and rectangles, save time and save thread by doing some chain piecing.