Paper Piecing

This was a decompression weekend and honestly, most of it was spent sewing.  Oh, I baked a cake and did a bit of cooking, and I spent several hours in the garden.  But, mostly I was sewing. 

I got this method from Judy Mathieson, Mariner’s Compass Quilts.  I recently bought a book of 10 paper piecing patterns.  It didn’t come with the patterns.  The book had instructions for 10 quilts and the patterns are on a CD.  I plan to try to print them on freezer paper and try this method.

First, I drew my patter on the dull side of freezer paper.  To make it easy to talk about, I’ve number my pieces.

I’m going to lay my first piece over number one on the shiny side.

And, from the dull side of the paper, I’ll press it down, just within the confines of piece one.

The little “wing” sections are loose.

I fold back the paper along line 1-2 and trim off the point.

So the fabric looks like this.

And, I lay fabric piece two, right sides together with one.  I put the pencil point so you could see the overlap of piece 2.  I’ll need that and have to make sure it’s there.

With the paper folded back, I sew the quarter inch seam, right along the folded edge of the paper.  I don’t stitch through the paper. 

And, I press that section down.

And, trim off the excess along the top and side, just like I did before.  That’s the thing about paper piecing.  Lots of repetition.

It looks like this. 

Repeat, and then it will look like this. 

When you get them all sewn, you peel back the paper.  You can use the template more than once. 

I wasn’t that smart and drew all four of the templates I needed to make this. 

And, because I refuse to put these tiny little scraps in the scrap bin, I also made this.

I think there’s one more small quilt in these scraps before I toss them.  I bought most of the fabrics as part of a kit at the Chisholm Trail quilt show and then decided I didn’t like the pattern that came with them.  So, I made something else.  It was 10 9x11” rectangles and a yard of the tan I used as a background and three or so more yards of other fabrics, solid red and solid green and a border print in shades I’ll have trouble matching.  Anyway, the prints were little pieces to begin with and so I decided to pull little bits of fabric out of the stash, make some quilts and use them until they were finished.

All is well on the home front.  It was a nice, rainy Sunday.  The best kind of day for sewing.

And, my back still hurts from gardening, so I know I worked out some stress.

Be well and have a great Monday.  Lane