Hey Everyone, welcome back to Technique Tuesday.
This week is all about using tissue paper to make a template for quilting. Often time I want to add a motif to the border of a quilt and need to make one from scratch. Many years ago when I was living in Yellowknife one of my instructors taught us this method of making tissue paper templates.
What you need is some tissue paper – I use a roll of the paper that goes on doctors office examining tables. It is nice and thin and the roll lasts forever. The other great thing about it being on a roll is you can use as much or as little as you need. There are other tissue papers out there that will do the job just as well. You will also need a pencil, rotary cutter or scissors and a motif.
Tissue paper ready for tracing
To begin trace or draw your motif on the tissue paper. I like to leave about an inch around the motif of extra space. This time I am using a Christmas tree cookie cutter for my motif.
Cookie cutter positioned on paper
Motif traced on tissue paper
Fan fold the tissue paper into layers – how many layers will depend on how many templates you need. I need 24 templates and I can get 3 out of a width of the tissue paper with this motif, so I will need 8 folds of tissue paper to yield 24 motifs.
Pages fan folded – see folds at the right hand edge
Cut off the paper from the roll and then fold the paper in thirds or a half depending on the size of your sheet.
Paper ready to be folded in thirds
You will end up with a square or rectangle of layers.
Layers of tissue paper folded
Take the thread out of your sewing machine and stitch around the motif with a shorter stitch length – I used 1.5. The holes from the needle creates the design in the tissue paper. By using a shorter stitch length the paper will tear off the quilt easier. (Click on image to see larger view)
Tissue paper after sewing – a hole punched motif
Each layer has been punched through which means that each layer is a template. (Click on image to see larger view)
Unfolding the paper will reveal further punched motifs
Trim off all of the edges to get rid of the folds.
Trim off all edges
Separate the layers to produce individual templates.
Individual templates
Tune in next week to see how to use these templates.
Happy Quilting!
What a brilliant idea will be using this. Would freezer paper do as well?
Dawn, not sure how well freezer paper would work just because it is thicker not sure how well it would rip off. The nice thing with it is you can iron it in place rather than pin it. I’ll have to give it a try.