A Tip For Paper Piecing

Hey Everyone, welcome back to Technique Tuesday.

A couple of months ago when my BOM class were working on the paper pieced blocks one of the members came up with a great way to make sure that the pieces of fabric covered the area that they were suppose to.

As you know with paper piecing the lines are on one side of the paper while the fabric is on the other side. Depending on the type of paper used the lines might be visible through the paper from the back side but more than likely not very well especially once fabric is placed on the paper. I have always held the paper and fabric up to a light to make sure that the pieces cover the area where they are suppose to and everything is aligned.

This member of the group thought there has to be an easier way to make sure everything is lined up properly without flipping the paper back and forth in front of a light and potentially having the pieces shift. This shifting of course happened to me the other day when I was remaking the stem of my maple leaf which is made up of a row of flying geese and I had to rip out a piece – no fun when the stitch length has been made smaller.

What she did was fold the paper on all of the lines in the template to the edges of the paper. By doing this she had a guide on the back of the paper as to where the pieces were to be positioned.

You could take it one step further and draw a line along the fold lines in order to distinguish them a little easier if you like but the fold will work very nicely as a guide.

Thanks Maureen for this great tip on helping with aligning the fabric pieces on a paper piecing template.

If you would like to know more about paper piecing then check out my blog post on how to paper piece flying geese.

Happy Quilting!

Jen Transparent Signature

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