Essentials to Foundation Paper Piecing

Paper piecing is a great way to be able to do some more intricate piecing or ones that have smaller pieces accurately by using a template, and using it to help place your pieces, trim, and stitch your pieces. So this is gonna be a simple log cabin block and I'm gonna show you how you would put this together using your paper piecing template. Now, when you get a paper piecing template they will definitely be somehow labeled. In this case it's numbered. So it's telling us what order we're going to be placing our pieces in this design. You start with number one and work your way out. So you see two, three, four, five six. We're kinda working in a clockwise pattern all the way up until we get to number 21. So you're gonna start in the middle at one, they may also be labeled using letters, so it could be A through Z. So whichever way your paper piecing pattern is labeled, you wanna start either the smallest number and work your way up or start with A and work your way through the alphabet. This is also a fun way to use up some little pieces of scraps. So I just have lots of strips. Some are even thicker than others. These were just left over from a quilt project I was already doing and I just had some extra strips cut. I didn't really wanna throw 'em away, wasn't sure what I was gonna use 'em for yet but paper piecing is a great way to use up some scraps. So, to start with your paper piecing pattern you need to start with a piece of fabric that is gonna cover your number one block. Now this is obviously plenty large enough so I'm gonna trim it down a little bit. But what I wanna do, and you can actually see through this fabric, so it's a good one to start with, is I wanna make sure that when I trim it down I'm not trimming it too much. I still need it to cover my shape. So I've trimmed my number one piece that I know that it's definitely going to cover my number one square. What I wanna do now is actually flip my template over. So the fabric is going to be on the wrong side of the template but I'm going to be stitching from the right side. We're gonna stitch from the right side because we can easily see our lines, what we'll be stitching on. So we're going to put our fabric on the wrong side. Now, from my angle I'm not sure if you can still see it. If you hold it up to the light you can still see your template through the paper so it's still easy enough to see where the number one box is. I'm gonna use some sort of adhesive to hold my first piece of fabric in place. You could use a glue stick. I like to use just a temporary adhesive. You can find this in the scrapbooking section of most craft stores, but I want to just make sure my piece is going to stay on my template right there. Now, I need a piece of fabric that is big enough to cover my number two section. So I've just cut another little strip here off of another little piece off my strip of fabric and it's definitely big enough to cover the number two square. So what we're going to be doing is we're going to be stitching and then flipping this up and over. So I don't wanna have a piece that just barely covers my square, I need to have about a quarter of an inch on either side for my seam allowance so I actually have something to stitch to. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna turn my template back over. I can see still that my number two piece is right here. What I'm gonna do is line up the edges of my fabric right like this. I'm gonna put a couple pins in place and then I'm going to stitch. Now, I'm putting the pins far enough on the outside of my number two block that I'm not worried about hitting these pins at all when I stitch. I do wanna make sure that I am pinning through the paper. It really helps hold it in place, and now I can take it over to my machine and stitch. What I wanna do is stitch on the line between the numbers one and two. So what I wanna do is use my hand wheel and lower my needle till it's just above the fabric where I wanna start, then I can drop my pressor foot and now I know I'm ready to go. I wanna use my hand wheel to get going so I know I'm very accurately starting at the edge of that line. I want to decrease my stitch length to right around a 1.5. This is because we are using this paper template that we want to be able to tear away. So doing a smaller stitch length makes that a little bit easier. And now I'm just going to stitch between lines one and two. I'll slow down when I get to the end 'cause I wanna make sure I stop right at the end of that line. I can take it out and I will trim my threads. I like to go ahead and trim my threads after each one that I stitch, that way I don't have a lot of thread getting in my way at the end. I'll take my pins out. And now what I need to do is flip up the piece that I just sewed. But you can see here that this piece of seam allowance is much bigger than a quarter of an inch. It's bigger than what I would like it to be otherwise my entire thing is going to be bulky. What I'm gonna do is take and fold my fabric or fold my template down along the line that I just stitched like so, fold it all the way across, take my ruler, line the quarter inch up with the edge of the template like so, and trim off this extra. This is an extra step that I'm doing between each area that I'm stitching, but it's going to make my final product a lot cleaner trimming down those seam allowances. I can flip this back over and I'm ready to press up my number two piece. I'm gonna do this first by finger pressing like so and then I'm going to take it over to my iron and press. So again, I finger pressed it in place, can take it over to my iron. I want to make sure it's folded over where I want it to be and then I'm just going to let my iron sit on top of there for a little bit. I don't wanna do a whole lot of moving when it comes to the iron because I don't wanna distort this piece at all. Now that I have it all pressed, I can take it back over and I'm ready to work on piece number three. So, I've done piece number one to two, now it's time to do pieces two to three. I want to use my fabric on the back to help me line up where I'm going to place my next number three piece. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna fold along this line right here between pieces two and three and I can do that just by looking at the line and folding it back over like so. I'm going to bring my ruler in, line my quarter inch line up with the edge of my piece of paper, trim away the extra that's gonna be in that seam allowance like that. I can fold this back up now and I need a piece of fabric that will cover my number three block. Just trim a little bit off of my scrap here. Know that's gonna be plenty big enough to cover number three. Turn my template back over and because I have trimmed this and I know that this is exactly a quarter inch from my line, I can line this piece of fabric up right with the edges of the fabric we just trimmed. I can go ahead and put some pins in like so. One more on this side. It helps to use a little bit of a thicker pin sometimes when you're pinning through the paper. Those silk pins can tend to bend and you can't get it through your paper. Now that I have this all lined up, I'm gonna take it over and I'm going to stitch. And again I can stitch on my lines between number two and number three. Same technique, I'm using my hand wheel, lowering my needle exactly where I wanna start, I can lower my pressor foot to hold it in place and I can stitch. Slowing as I get to the end so I don't stitch too far. I can take it back off and trim my threads. Again I like to trim as I go. Go ahead and flip it over, trim here, and I remove my pins. I'm going to finger press and then I will press it with the iron again. So, finger press first and then I can take it over to the iron, make sure it's folded back where I want it, and just let the iron sit on there for a little bit. And just like that it's pressed down. Now I've already trimmed that seam allowance so I don't have to trim it again but I would just continue doing this process. So now I need to do piece number four. So I could pivot this around, I would fold my pattern piece back along piece number four just like this. Make sure I'm folding along that line, bring my ruler in, line my quarter inch up with the edge of my template, and I can cut away the extra. So now as I move on, didn't cut all the way through there. As I move on to my next piece, again I know that my seam allowance is already trimmed so I could do piece number five, six, and keep going all the way around utilizing the same method. So again, it's an extra step where you have to fold your template over and trim but it really helps you get a nice finished product. So here's one that I've already done all of the pieces. So you can see on the template side I've stitched all the way up to number 21. I finished it off. On this side everything lays nice and flat because I've pressed after each step and it kept everything nice and flat. And so the last thing you need to do is trim around the outside edge. On your templates you will probably have a dotted line and a solid line. The solid line is where you wanna cut. This dotted line is your quarter inch seam allowance that it has allowed for on all four sides of your block. So I can take and trim this up, lining my ruler up along the solid line. I'm just trimming off that extra fabric that's overhanging, trimming off the extra parts of the template. Do this on all four sides. One more here. Do our last side. Okay, and you can see from the front we have a nice finished log cabin block that has been perfectly pieced because we used the paper piecing method. And then when you're ready to use this all you would do is simply remove all of your pieces of paper. And you can see since we trimmed all of our seam allowances as we went, as we're exposing them as we go around, all of our seam allowances are right at a quarter inch. There's no extra bulk that we need to worry about trying to trim away after. It would be sort of difficult to try and go back in and shorten or remove any extra bulk in those seam allowances afterwards. So taking the time to do that extra little step of flipping your pattern piece up and trimming as you go is gonna give you a nice finished product and I hope you try out this method the next time you wanna do any kind of paper piecing.