Paper Piecing Tips and Tricks

Paper piecing is one of my favorite ways to piece a quilt block. It lets me use crazy angles to create picture blocks, some of which are so intricate they don't even look like they were pieced from fabric. I paper-pieced my first quilt block almost 10 years ago and today I am sharing my method for paper piecing. These are things I've learned from both reading other tutorials and trial and error.

I'll start with some general information to make your paper piecing successful. All of the tools shown in the first part of the tutorial will be used in the second part, but it's also possible to paper piece with whatever you have on hand. Throughout the entire tutorial, I use the term "blob" to refer to the fabric that is already sewn onto the paper pattern pieces; if anyone knows a more technical term I'd love to hear it!

Rulers. You can paper-piece with your regular quilting rulers, but if you are planning on doing a lot of it, I highly recommend the Add-A-Quarter Plus ruler. These rulers have a tiny lip that fits over your folded paper so the ruler doesn't slip when you trim your seam allowance. The shorter, pink ruler (Add-A-Quarter Plus) has a tapered edge for folding the paper back cleanly (mine is a bit uneven from where I accidentally tried to trim with that side once - it comes perfectly straight). The longer yellow ruler in this picture is older and doesn't have the tapered edge.

Pins and Clips. I use pins to line up my pattern sections and clips to hold them together while sewing. The pins provide accuracy when I'm lining up the two sections and the clips hold everything together securely while I'm sewing.

Printing and Check Square. I print my patterns on regular printer paper. Make sure your printer is set to 100% before printing, then measure the 1" square in the corner of the pattern to ensure your pattern has printed at the correct size. If it doesn't measure 1" square, your finished block won't be the size you are expecting.

Taping. Some pattern pieces won't fit on a single sheet of printer paper and need to be assembled before you can sew them together.

1. Cut both pattern pieces out on the dotted lines.
   
2. Cut on the dotted join line on one of the pieces. This will help with accuracy when you are assembling the pattern piece.
   
3. Place the trimmed piece on top of the untrimmed piece so it lines up with the dotted join line. My photo shows them off-set to demonstrate the correct overlap.
   
4. Tape pieces together on the dotted line. This doesn't need to span the whole height, just be long enough to hold it together. I like to flip my pattern piece over and put a piece of tape on the back as well.
   

Stitch Length. Set the stitch length on your sewing machine to 1.5. This will make removing the paper easier when your block is complete.

Thread Color. I change my thread color to match the color of the fabric I am sewing with. I generally use the color of the fabric piece I am adding on to my main piece (e.g. when I sew B5 onto my blob I'm using thread that matches B5). Just like traditional piecing, your thread shouldn't show through to the front side of your project, but when paper piecing intricate areas with many layers of fabric sometimes it does and using a matching thread color masks it. It's not really necessary with the Meeple pattern, but it's something I do out of habit based on other projects that I have made.

Now that you have all your supplies, it's time to get out some fabric and start sewing! The number one rule in paper piecing is always use a bigger piece of fabric than you think you'll need. Ripping out those tiny stitches is so hard that if I make a mistake I'll often chose to start over rather than rip all the stitches out.

Center the section marked "1" over the wrong side of your starting piece of fabric and secure them together. You don't want anything to shift while you are sewing! I used three pins because it's such a large piece of fabric. You can also use a glue stick, but I've found that that makes it harder to remove the paper at the end. From here you will be sewing other pieces of fabric on in the numbered order printed on the pattern*.

Place the tapered edge of your ruler on the sewing line and fold the paper back over it, creasing it and leaving it folded as you ease the ruler out. If you don't have a tapered ruler, just fold carefully. Place the ruler over the fold and trim a quarter inch away for your seam allowance.

Next, you need to find a piece of fabric that is large enough to cover the next section of fabric. In the first picture, I traced the seam allowance so it would show up in the picture, but normally I just hold it up to the light so I can see the lines through the paper. In the second picture, I drew the lines on so you can see that my piece is the correct size; there is room for seam allowances on all sides of the shape. Move the second piece of fabric so the right sides of the two pieces of fabric are touching.

Another way to check this is to put the right sides of the fabric together and stick a pin through the farthest corner of the section that is being added, then flip the fabric blob over to make sure the new fabric piece is large enough.

It is up to you if you pin these together before you start sewing. I normally only pin if it is a long seam or if my new piece of fabric is exactly the right size and any sort of shift would make it not fit correctly. Sew directly on the line of the pattern, securing your thread at either end. Do not sew into the seam allowance!

Sometimes the new piece needs to be placed at an angle to get the correct coverage, especially if it is a scrappy piece. If this happens, place it so that you have enough fabric, sew the line, and then re-trim the seam allowance before you press.

Fold the newly added fabric back and press. There's no way to press seams open in paper piecing; they will always go towards the piece you have just attached.

Continue to add fabric pieces to your main blob, following the numbered sequence on the pattern. Here, I am trimming across two fabric pieces before adding my new one, but I'll sew on the line in the exact same way I did the first time. I used the tapered edge of the small ruler to fold the paper back, moving it to fold the full length, but I'm cutting with my longer ruler so that I can cut in a single motion.

Here's the best picture I could get of that little lip on the bottom of the Add-a-Quarter ruler; it keeps the ruler the perfect distance from your fold while you are trimming the excess fabric away. You can always measure a quarter-inch with a regular quilting ruler, but I've found that the ruler slips sometimes due to the two layers of each of fabric and paper underneath it. This ruler has never slipped on me while I was using it!

Once all of the sections have been sewn on, trim your blob using the outer seam allowances marked on the pattern piece and a regular quilting ruler - there's no lip here for the Add-a-Quarter ruler to go over so it will wobble all over if you try to use it. DO NOT remove the paper from the back, you'll need the lines to join your pieces properly.

Complete all the pattern pieces in the same way, then it's time to join them together! It looks like there's no way these two pattern pieces will line up, but through the magic of geometry and paper piecing, it will all come together as expected.

Place the right sides together, then put a pin in a spot that you know needs to match up - in this case I am using the center of the Meeple's head. Flip your piece over to make sure the pin is coming out in the correct place on the backside.

Add a few more pin checkpoints to make sure your seam allowances are aligned, then clip the pattern pieces together and remove the pins. Sew on the joining line all the way across. I changed thread colors when I was sewing across the head section, but if you are using a single color chose one that matches the lighter fabric.

Remove the paper from above the seam you just sewed on both sides by folding it over the stitch line and then carefully ripping it off - you don't want to pull your stitches out! Once the paper is removed, press towards the side with fewer seams (in this case, the head).

See? Everything lines up perfectly! Repeat to join the legs, then gently remove the remaining paper from the back of the block. From here, you can finish the block however you'd like. In my case, it's a full quilt of color-blocked Meeples, something I'm very excited about. Only two more rows to go!

I hope you found this tutorial helpful - if you have any questions please leave a comment and I will respond via email to you! As a bonus, I'm sharing a never before seen picture of my first paper-pieced project, a bird mini quilt that I made and gifted to my mother-in-law back in 2013! It's also the first piece that I free-motion quilted - all the quilting was done with my regular piecing foot because I didn't know any better at the time!

The Meeple pattern is available in my pattern shop.

* Unless you are me and accidentally start with the B5 side and don't realize it until after you've already taken and edited all the photos. For this quilt block, it doesn't matter since B5 doesn't build on B2-B4, but in general you're going to want to do the numbers in order for best results.