Paper Piecing 101

I made my first paper pieced block! I pulled it from the Carol Doak website. She has a lot of free patterns on her website.  You guys should check it out because some of the patterns are pretty neat. It's just www.caroldoak.com.

I have been wanting to try paper piecing for a long time, but have been scared to try it . I found this pattern on the Carol Doak website because it was labeled Paper Piecing for Beginners. That's me!

It was not as hard as I thought, but you have to pay attention to how you place the fabric before you sew it to make sure it's going to cover the entire space correctly.

The picture above shows the paper with the lines that you sew on. The middle picture is how the finished block looks before you trim it.  Do not tear the paper off until after you trim the block to the proper size using the paper as your  template .  The third picture is the completed block  after  it's been trimmed to the proper size .

The easiest thing to do is to place your first fabric right side up, find your first sew line and place your second fabric right side down ( so that right side - right side are facing each other).  Make sure you've allowed enough fabric to give yourself a quarter inch seam allowance along the sew line. Also make sure that you set your Stitch to a small size to make tearing the paper easier.  I used a 2 mm length. Then flip everything over and sew on the backside of the paper along the line. The picture below shows this detail. Oh, do not forget to back stitch at the beginning and at the end of the line. This helps when your tear the paper off. It keeps your stitches in place and prevents them from tearing out.

I used Mary Ellen's best press after I trimmed the block when I ironed it. This helps to stabilize the block. The finished block is shown below! Another important tip is to make sure that you pay attention to the materials, colors and placement when you are making a block like this. Otherwise you lose the pattern if the colors are too scrappy looking. Look at the picture of the finished block before you decide on the materials and colors you are going to use.

The wonderful thing about paper piecing is that all your seams miraculously lay nicely. Have you ever sewn a block that had a lot of points come together, and you have a big bulky spot where all the seams come together and you cannot figure out how to lay it right to get rid of the bulk? Well, somehow with paper piecing all of the seams end up laying nice and flat.