Introduction to foundation paper piecing for beginners
Ever seen those beautiful pictures online of quilt blocks with animals, plants, or other objects pieced in them?
We’re talking different colored fabrics being sewn together to make a picture.
Ever wonder how a quilter can get precise enough to accomplish such a hard quilt block?
They have a secret, it’s called Foundation Paper Piecing, and it’s actually super easy.
Today’s post is all about learning the basics of this game-changing technique and why it’ll quickly become the newest essential in your quilting tool box of tricks.
What is foundation paper piecing and what are the benefits of using it?
Foundation paper piecing is an out of the box quilting technique that involves printing a picture template of your block where each section is given a number.
Starting at the section labeled 1, you use the paper template to guide you in making each seam. The beauty is, as long as the fabric is large enough to cover the area, you can use it, if it’s too big, it’ll get trimmed off later. No more template cutting!
Sequentially you’ll add number two to number one, three to two, and so on, sewing by number using the paper as your guide, and sewing on the lines to combine.
Once the template is completed and all of the sections are filled in, you simply trim up the template, and you’re done!
There are a handful of benefits to using this method:
- You don’t need to spend time cutting weird shaped fabric pieces
- Your consistency between blocks is amazing since each template is identical
- There is no such thing as maintaining a 1/4” seam allowance
- Sewing on a line ensures the angles in your blocks are exactly right for every block
- You can accomplish incredibly complicated quilt blocks with ease and they’ll look identical every single time.
Learning this technique has the potential to change your quilting forever. So let’s get started to see how easy it really is.
Materials for getting started foundation paper piecing
The list is pretty short which makes this technique easy to get started with:
- Foundation paper
- Any stiff and thin material – part of a cereal box/post card/template plastic
- An Add-a-quarter ruler
- Fabric
- Sewing machine
- Scissors for paper
- A pattern to use!
Notions to make foundation paper piecing easier
Introducing the Add-a-quarter-ruler!
An Add-a-Quarter Ruler is a specialty ruler that has a notch in the back of it. That notch measures out a 1/4 inch for quickly marking your seam allowance.
While it is totally doable to use your normal quilting ruler, the add a quarter ruler makes life much quicker by hooking on to the seam marker and you will get a perfect 1/4″ cut every time without having to think too much about it.
If you are doing a double wedding ring template like this one and have 60+ rings and 8 seams in each ring to sew, you invest in anything to make your life quicker and easier. Its a cheap tool that worth its weight in gold.
Related:
The easiest way to make a double wedding ring
Check out the Add-A-Quarter Ruler on Amazon here.
Print and cut out your templates
When you get the pattern for your quilt block that includes your paper piecing templates, you will have to transfer the pattern on to whats called foundation paper.
If you have never used foundation paper before, it’s basically just a thin paper, similar to newspaper, that is cut to a standard 8.5”x11” size and can be printed on.
The paper will ultimately be removed from the quilt before finishing, so using this thinner type of paper makes it much easier to rip out later.
You can find my go to brand on Amazon here.
You will need one template per block of the quilt. It is also common to need multiple sections of templates to make a single block depending on the complexity.
Be prepared, you will likely need a lot of templates.
Once printed out, cut them out to just slightly bigger than the printed template section. Trimming them down will help get all that extra paper out of the way while we sew.
Preparing the Fabric
For this technique we do not need super accurate cutting skills or really any cutting skills. Rough square or rectangle shapes will work. You just need fabric slightly bigger than your templates sections.
Your pattern will tell you what dimension to cut your fabric to, and most often it will be some type of square or rectangle, however as long as it is big enough to cover the shape on your template plus at least 1/4” extra for a seam allowance, you’ll be good to go. This technique is fantastic for scraps 😉
Once your fabric is all cut and ready to go, its time to start sewing!
When you look at your template you will see an outline of your eventual quilt block in sections where each section will have a number.
All we are going to do is sew by number.
Define the first seam allowance
On your template, find section number 1 and using a quilting ruler, draw a line 1/4” above it. This is going to be your seam allowance when you place your first piece of fabric.
Find your fabric choice that matches that section and place the fabric right side down on the table.
Put a small dab of washable fabric glue on it and place your template on the fabric so the edge of your fabric lines up with the line you just drew on the template.
If you’ve never used fabric glue in your quilting before, check out my go to favorite, I hate making a mess with glue so it’s the only kind I use.
In step 2 we will be sewing on the printed line between sections 1 and 2 so by drawing the line a little further away and using it to line our fabric up with, we know we will have enough room for seam allowance when we sew later.
Make sure your fabric generously covers the rest of the section 1 part of your template.
Not sure if you are covering the section enough? Try holding it up to the light. The foundation paper is thin enough that you will be able to tell with light behind it.
Place your second fabric and sew
Flip your template over so the right side of fabric 1 faces up
Take your number 2 section fabric and place them right sides together, matching the edge up to the line you drew for the seam allowance.
Okay! You are officially ready to sew the first seam!
Take the whole thing, paper and all, to the sewing machine and sew directly on the printed line (not your drawn line) between sections 1 and 2 using the template as your guide.
Be sure to keep your two fabrics lined up.
Sew directly on the line, you can sew through any seam allowances around the edges.
Once you have sewn the two fabrics together, bring it to the iron and press the second fabric out.
You can iron right over the paper, just be careful not to use steam or the paper might will definitely get a little soggy.
Notice how when you press the second fabric out it covers all of section two. Thats what we want.
If you make a seam and discover you are starting to not cover everything in the section, you may need to rip it and move it slightly and restitch it, otherwise you’ll likely end up with holes in your block.
Now that we’ve set everything with the first seam, it only gets quicker.
Trim fabric 2’s seam allowance
Next step you want to take a thin piece of something stiff to use to make your seam line.
A small section of a cereal box, or postcard will work, I use a shard of template plastic myself.
What ever you chose to use, I’m going to refer to this as a “seam marker”.
On your template, find where section two meets section three. This is where you want your next seam to be.
Put your seam marker right on the printed line between the two sections and fold back just the paper creasing it over the seam marker. Your fabric 2 edge should be left flat on the table.
Grab your Add-a-Quarter ruler, and hook it over the edge of your seam marker and the folded back foundation paper.
Trim any fabric beyond the ruler (there is likely going to be some fabric waste) so you are only left with 1/4” beyond that next seam line.
Put your ruler and seam marker off to the side and flip your template over. It should look something like this:
Adding fabric 3
Match up fabric 3 to the edge where you just cut fabric 2.
Make sure that when you ultimately flip this seam open you will be covering the entire next section. You may have to cheat your fabric over to the inside of a curve like I had to below.
When templates curve like the one I have above, your fabric ends up piecing in a straight line while your template curves. Cheating your fabrics one way or the other helps make sure your next section gets fully covered.
Now hold the template and fabric 3 together, head back to the sewing machine and sew the seam.
Once pressed open, just continue this process and work your way through all of the sections of your paper pieced template until you have it all filled in!
Trim the edges
Remember how when we cut the templates out we left room on the outsides of the template?
Now that we have all of our fabric sewn on, go ahead and trim right up next to the outer most line.
It’s important to be aware of which line you are trimming against. It’s typical for the outside seam allowance of the piece to be included in the template like mine above.
If I trimmed the inside curve closest to the numbers by accident, I’d be trimming away my seam allowance to connect my blocks with and have to redo the whole thing.
And then you cry. Trust me, it happens.
But by waiting til this point to trim the excess from the edges you are getting a perfectly consistent result.
Without a whole lot of effort. Or frustration. Or time spent cutting perfectly templated pieces.
This sets me up for a pieced section that I can then go and use to finish my block with.
Combine blocks together
At this point you can combine your blocks together with or without the paper.
The paper piecing patterns conveniently leaves a 1/4” seam allowance for you all around the outside of the blocks so if you wanted to you could actually leave the paper in your blocks and use the line of the outside seam allowance to help you maintain that 1/4” seam allowance while you are combining blocks.
Just a word of caution though, it’ll be a bit of a project to remove all of the paper once the entire quilt top is assembled since the project will be so large.
If not and you want to get the paper removal out of the way early, be sure to check out a few of our articles on our quilting hacks to maintain a 1/4” seam allowance:
Depending on your strengths though, leaving the paper in may be another perfect solution to keep everything square and lined up.
The choice is up to you.
Pull the paper out
Depending on the pattern you have you may have a full block now, or if you are like me, I only have a portion of my block.
Not every part of every block is able to be paper pieced. You may be in a situation where you take your paper pieced section and use it to continue piecing more of your quilt block.
But its a great cheat to use when possible to get as many parts of your blocks as perfect and consistent as you can.
At this point you can go ahead and pull the foundation paper out and go ahead to the next step of your quilting!
By using the foundation paper you should be able to pull it out pretty easily, just bend it back and forth once or twice at the seam line and it should come right out being careful not to rip the stitches with it.
You have officially paper pieced your quilt block!
Congrats!
What is the difference between paper piecing and foundation paper piecing?
Let’s chat about the fact that there are two types of paper piecing in the quilting world.
Foundation paper piecing, and English paper piecing.
Both are forms of piecing a quilt top, but are VERY different quilting methods. Its important to know which one you are looking for when you are buying your quilt patterns so you don’t end up with the opposite kind that you were expecting.
English paper piecing involves hand sewing, foundation paper piecing uses the sewing machine.
Foundation paper piecing allows quilters to create perfect seam lines and amazing consistency between your quilt blocks without having to be super accurate with your cutting and seams as we showed a bit earlier.
Its an amazing tool for making yourself and quilts look really good without needing years and years of experience and skill.
English paper piecing involves wrapping fabric around shaped templates and hand sewing them together to created a tessellated pattern which ultimately builds large enough to make your quilt top.
I learned quickly that hand piecing or quilting is not exactly my cup of tea so I don’t have any personal examples of English paper piecing, but if you check out #englishpaperpiecing on instagram, you’ll be able to get a great idea of what this looks like.
What kind of paper do you use for foundation paper piecing?
It’s basically just newspaper.
The paper is much thinner than normal computer paper and rips very easily. It is totally possible to do this with computer paper, but because computer paper is stiffer, it will definitely make things a little harder later.
Foundation paper comes in printer sized paper so you can easily print/copy your pattern as many times as you need on your home printer.
You can check out my go to brand on Amazon here.
Can I use freezer/parchment paper or any other DIY alternatives?
Absolutely.
The only thing you are trading off by using a DIY alternative is that you will have to cut them into printer friendly sizes before printing which will take additional time.
You may also find that they are a bit thinner than the store bought stuff, but as long as you aren’t rough with your templates it should work just fine.
The one alternative that you’ll want to avoid if possible, is regular computer paper.
It’ll work to make the block on, but because computer paper is thicker compared to a newspaper thickness, it’ll take much more work to rip out from your blocks at the end potentially causing you a headache depending on how determined you are to get every piece out.
Free paper piecing pattern
If you’re now itching to give foundation paper piecing a try, you’re going to love our free paper pieced baby quilt pattern Blocked.
Blocked is a color blocked (see what I did there?) abstract modern baby quilt that is great for the less than traditional nurseries out there with a midcentury flair.
It uses a large scale paper piecing pattern to help you line up each of the seams (and there’s less than 10!) so you get the perfect angle at the end.
You can see the details of this quilt finish here!
No crazy template cutting, or stressing about the perfect 1/4” seam allowance, definitely the beauty of foundation paper piecing.
Blocked is available in our Free Quilt Pattern Vault along with all of our other free patterns so be sure to sign up below for immediate access and get your copy!
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