Quick Tips: DIY Seam Guide

Some machines will come with a seam allowance guide which slides on behind the foot in some fashion and gives you this physical barrier to align the edge of your fabric with to help you get straight seams and even seam allowances. But if you don't have one of these, you can make your own. I like to use something with kind of a high profile like a lego block or you can cut little pieces of cardboard and stack them on top of each other for this and on the wrong side, you want to use some double sided tape. So here's my double sided tape that I have on the wrong side here and then remove that paper backing. And then you can place this on your machine bed wherever you need to.

So measure from your central needle position over to the correct seam allowance distance and you can place it back here if you want to butt up your fabric edge against, or you can place it forward of the needle to have something to align your fabric with before it goes under the needle. And this double sided tape is nice because it sticks really Well, but if you need to, you can still pull it off and it doesn't leave any residue on your machine. So I'm going to stick my LEGO back here and the edge of the fabric just has that bit of that physical barrier to guide it against. So I get a straight seam and an even seam allowance.