Sew Inspired Fudge Factor™
The design of the Sew Inspired Design™ Templates is unique because of an added feature exclusively created by Sara Miller-Moe. That feature is the Sew Inspired Fudge Factor™. After making hundreds of blocks containing curved seams and constantly finding that the blocks ended up smaller than they should have been, I realized that it wasn’t a result of careless sewing, but the result of the ease-factor. When you sew two curved seams together, it is necessary to ease one curve into the other, because – due to the bias edges – the two curves will be slighty different. This is the reason that blocks with durves seams always seem to shrink when you piece them.
To compensate for the ease factor, the Sew Inspired Design™ acrylic templates were made with the outside straight edges slightly larger than they need to be so that the blocks will all end up being too large rather than too small after they are pieced. A block that is too large can be easily trimmed down, but you can’t add fabric back on (seamlessly at least) to fix a block that ends up too small.
Since the fudge factor was added to the outside straight edges of the templates, there will be no change to the curved seams i the blocks and they will still end up on the 3″, 6″ or 9″ or the 2″, 4″ 04 6″ point on the block. Once you have pieced your block together, you can trim the block down to exactly 9 1/2″ using the specially designed Sew Inspired Square-It Tool™. Just line up your seams on the 3″ or 6″ or the 2″ or 4″ mark on the ruler as shown on the Sew Inspired Square-It Tool™ page.