Essential Paper Piecing Skills for
Beginning Quilters
An Introduction

Paper Piecing doesn’t have to suck. 

It's true!

Learn the simple techniques and tricks to add this infinitely helpful skill to your traditional or modern or art quilting arsenal. 

These are the paper piecing techniques I use to streamline the  process and avoid unnecessarily ripping out patches that were either too skimpy or poorly positioned.

No matter what pattern I'm using.

It really is that simple

No matter how simple or complex the paperpiecing design, one patch is always added to another with a straight seam. 

Over and over and over again.

Until the block or unit is finished.

These techniques are applicable to every single paperpiecing pattern—from those you download freely from this site to those you purchase elsewhere.

First let's foster the proper mindset—whether you're a committed paperpiecer, or considering using the technique, or have a love/hate relationship with it already.

If you're already primed and in a 'paper-piecing-state-of-mind', then click here to skip to the Table of Contents and choose your topic.

Or go straight to the Free Paper Piecing library (that include at least some paper piecing) found here on this site and choose a pattern to play with.

Otherwise, let's get into the proper head-space for your paper piecing breakthrough!

Getting into the proper head space

Many quilters shudder at the idea of paperpiecing—they HATE and RESIST removing the paper!

1. Make more intricate quilts...

...(i.e. Mariner's Compass, New York Beauty) that most wouldn't dream of attempting with rotary cutting and templates. Would you?

It'd be just too much darned work.

In Untitled below, all the arcs are paper pieced, as is the border. Simple curved piecing to fit the arcs together and VOILA! ;)

2. Compensate for a 'tired mind'

Most of my quilting time is stolen from the end of a day—not the beginning when the brain is fresh—how about you?

No matter how tired, we CAN stitch on a line by setting our machines' speed a bit slower—slow enough that you are always in control.

Voila!

Sewing time is reclaimed.

Ripping is banished.

It makes for a much happier quilter who gets stuff done that STAYS done!

3. Save time, especially if you're a 'sew it bigger, then trim to perfection' kind of quilter...

...for standard units like Flying Geese and half square triangles. You eliminate a lot of the bo-o-oring trimming.

Need a bunch of half square triangles (HST) sewn together?

Try paperpiecing them in a continuous strip. Then trim the whole group of them just once—not individually for each half square triangle.

The patches for the 6-HST unit above are cut oversized, then stitched and pressed.

Only after all six HSTs are pieced together in one continuous strip are the outside four edges trimmed—not each individual HST's four edges—4 cuts vs. 24 cuts.

That's 20 fewer cuts per strip of 6!

And the six are already stitched together.

Perfectly.

The first time.

A HUGE time savings.

And the technique isn't limited to HSTs

Here's FOURTEEN Flying Geese paperpieced as a single unit—it's so much faster and more accurate to trim once around the outside of the 14-Geese unit instead of 4 cuts around each single Flying Geese AND THEN have to pin and stitch them all together.

To make things even better since you sewed slow enough to stay on the stitching line, ALL the points are perfect. 

Perfect units are sew much easier to stitch into a quilt top.

This particular pattern has 64 of these 14-unit Flying Geese.

If you make those Flying Geese individually, that's a total of 896  Geese to trim with 4 sides each for a total of 3,584 trims (64 x 14 x 4 = 3,584).

With paper piecing, only 64 units (like the 2 shown above) are trimmed on four sides for 256 (64 x 4 sides) swipes of the ruler.

That's quite a time and 'wear-and-tear-on-the-old-chicken-wing' savings!

And seriously.

There's no way I could keep my mind on the task for 896 of the little beauties.

Could you?

All that pointy, quilty-goodness in exchange for a bit of extra fabric,  sewing on a line and ripping off a pattern.

What's not to love???

4. Sew more accurately in exchange for some paper removal

 Rip paper—that's what I do during the mindless-idiot time spent in front of the ol' boob-tube.

Or when I'm waiting for my husband's surgery to finish.

Or when I don't feel like thinking/concentrating/sewing at Sew-In Sundays with my quilting-sisters-in-crime.

Now that's something to show for my time.

Sweet!

And painless!

5. Make pictorial-type quilts

Unless you want to applique the whole thing or spend your life cutting templates, it's the perfect method for pictorial quilts like "English Roses"...

...hands down.

If your friends would like copies, please send them back to this site to print their own. (The traffic to this website provides the income to continue to provide these free-to-you resources.)

It is my experience copies printed directly from the computer are way more accurate than Xeroxed copies—and paper piecing is all about achieving reliable, reproducible accuracy.

Return to the Essential Paper Piecing Skills for Beginning Quilters Table of Contents to choose your next topic.

OR

For blocks to try paper piecing, check out for Free Paper Piecing Block Library where each design is at least partially paper pieced.