Playing with Paper Piecing

On choosing a quilt pattern to make in the remainder of my summer, I was drawn to the Dear Jane quilt, that classic 169 square monstrosity. Over the last couple of weeks, Didi and I had been drawn to various tile patterns that would make stunning quilt patterns, and many of the blocks in the Dear Jane are of very similar styles. Of course, the plan for now is not the entire quilt, just 5 or 6 squares arranged into a twin-sized quilt.

Much of this quilt, however, uses foundation paper piecing, a technique I had never used until yesterday. Before I committed myself to any of the squares, I decided to learn how to paper piece, and see whether or not I could plausibly use the technique on many blocks.



I started with a walkthrough from Craftsy (found here), that used the free Wonky Star block (also from Craftsy, found here), and went through the very basics of the directions of fabric, how much to cut, and how I should align it. After working through a block of this, with this super-detailed tutorial, I convinced myself that paper-piecing was super-easy, and the people who complained about it were over-reacting, so I jumped ahead and decided to try a more fun block.

I found the pattern for Mr Fox on Craftsy for free (found here), and decided it looked plenty simple. Over the few hours I spent piecing this 5 inch block, I realized there is a lot more to foundation paper piecing than I had first realized.
Overall:

Things I enjoyed:
- Paper piecing doesn't require very precise cutting, since the excess all gets cut off.
- Since there is essentially a template, you really don't have to worry about measurements, as long as you know it will cover the end.

Things I didn't enjoy:
- So much fabric waste!
- When I messed up, I couldn't just rip the seam out and fix it, I had to rip the seams out, rip the paper off, re-print the paper template, and then re-do the entire thing.

In the end, I ended up with an alright looking fox. The biggest struggle ended up being not the foundation paper piecing, but piecing the final pieces together. It was late enough at night by the time I got to that part that I ended up just leaving it as they ended up, but there is much that could have been improved in that area. If I did it again, I would also pay more attention to which sections of the print ended up in which sections of the template. Mr. Fox looks like he has a little gray hat because a section of the fish ended up on top of his head.


Overall, while it is more complicated than I initially thought, my progress through this experiment seems to indicate that it just requires practice, and experience piecing these types of blocks. Once I understood the basics of where to place things and when to press, I was able to go through pieces at a much faster pace. With time, foundation paper piecing could be quite relaxing, especially to avoid measuring things.

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