This is another of those “Duh!” tricks to speed up your sewing. I’ve been making silly little dolly chemises, and I keep running into areas where I need to sew 1/4″ by hand to close a band, or finish a sleeve vent. This happens in normal sewing, too, but you’re usually looking at 2″ or so. Normally, you have to grab a thread, thread a needle, knot the end of the thread, find someplace relatively hidden to lodge it, and then you get to actually start sewing. We can cut out at least two of those steps.
All you need to do is make sure you’re leaving yourself enough of a thread tail. That’s not so hard. I’m not recommending this for anything over 3-4″ of work, but for those stupid little piddly finishing bits, it’s not a bad time-saver.