Tip Tuesday! Short Cuts - Good or Bad?

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"Tip Tuesday!" - Short Cuts - Good or Bad?

I love learning new things and then sharing that knowledge with my quilting friends. So, every Tuesday I'll provide some tips, hints, tricks, tutorials, shortcuts, etc. that I've learned over the years and share them here on the blog. 

"Tip Tuesday" will be a collection of information about a wide variety of subjects garnered from a large variety of sources.  I am not an expert by any means and do not take credit for being the great wizard behind all of these hints and tips. I will gladly give due credit whenever possible.

These tips will be archived and accessible to you just by clicking on the "Tip Tuesday" tab above. 

Read, enjoy, and be inspired! 

I know we all get in a hurry and sometimes take short cuts. But, as we all know, sometimes our short cuts end up taking more time or don't produce the quality that we really want. In terms of quilting, we have short cuts for cutting, piecing, pressing, quilting, etc. You name it, someone has come up with a short cut. 

On of the short cuts that I've seen a number of my students doing lately involves cutting. The make their cuts, but they don't remove the selvage. I completely get leaving the selvage on if you are going to be piecing strips together that will need to have a clean up cut made before sub-cutting. I get it. I really do.

But....

Sometimes we forget to do a complete clean up cut and some of the selvage remains when we make the first sub-cut. I've done that; and on more than one occasion, I've had to toss one of the pieces because the selvage shows. It didn't take to many times of doing that (especially when I had a limited amount of the fabric and was worried that I'd have enough), before I started checking carefully and make the proper trimming.

If you don't, be prepared for something like this to happen.

Can you see the selvage in the tan fabric? Can you also see that this quilt has been quilted. I noticed this while I was binding it. Fortunately (I guess), this isn't my quilt. If it was, I don't know what I would do. Would I stop and make the correction right then and there, or would I say, "Well, it's hardly noticeable."
 ARGGHHHH! 

Here's an even worse possible issue with leaving the selvages on one while sub-cutting and having it pieced in to the quilt. This would really upset me! This would be a pain to fix, but I think I'd have to. If I chose to leave this, I'm positive that would be the first thing I would saw whenever I looked at the quilt.

So, be careful when using short cuts. Make sure you check and then double check to see if you've removed all of the selvage. You may be sorry if you don't.