Trimming Points

Is trimming points before sewing a waste of time?  I've always thought so, and I still do, but when sewing a trapezoid piece to a quarter square triangle to make this frame for my old blocks, there are two places that must line up perfectly.  

Here's what the finished piece should look like--straight on the bottom, and with a quarter inch seam allowance at the top so you don't lose the point.  Eye-balling the placement for this is hard.  Believe me I know.

So I thought I'd give Judy Martin's point trimmer tool a try, and I'm a believer, at least for this.  It took some experimentation for me to work this out, so in case anyone else needs to do the same thing, here's what I learned.

To trim the 45 degree angle on the trapezoid that goes at the top of the join, I used the C trim, lining it up with the point of the triangle.

The triangle has its tip cut off, also with the C trim.  (If you use a quarter-square triangle tool, the tip is already cut off.  More about that another time.)

Then use the B trim to cut off the 45 degree points, like so.

Triangle trimmed:

When the pieces are lined up for sewing, they look like this, a perfect match:

And the result is also perfect, or almost:

You just repeat the process with the other side.

Now this is rather tedious, I certainly admit.  But it makes the sewing so much faster that I think it's worth it.  But I still wouldn't want to trim hundreds of these pieces like that, would you?