Paper Piecing

I've been looking at some pretty amazing paper pieced blocks on Flickr and Pinterest. So I finally decided to jump into the deep end. And by that, I meant I found a tutorial on paper piecing on YouTube and watched it... then I jumped into the deep end.

 

I decided that for my very first paper pieced block, I would... not use a free pattern online (which would have been the smart thing to do). No! I decided that I was going to outline a block I had seen online in Paint, print it out, cut it apart into three sections, and then use that to piece my first ever block. Surprisingly it worked. I have one beautiful block (that I would link a picture to, but I'm afraid it might give away when I intend to start working on next) made from some of my scrap fabric.

I really adore the final product, the lines are straight and crisp, and even the smallest pieces where super easy to piece without fumbling around. Also, my hatred of pinning actually didn't matter. Simply holding the piece in place until the presser foot was down did the trick for most of the pieces.

One helpful hint, I started out with my thread length at 1, but that actually perforated the paper too much and the fabric would fall off the paper. So I switch to 1.5, just long enough that the fabric remained attached to the paper, but short enough that the paper perforated and tore off neatly when the block was done. So, do a few test runs to see what's too long and what's too short before you get started.

The only difficult part is getting a directional pattern to line up properly, especially when the line is on an angle and the piece you've cut is not.