Foundation Piecing Session 3: Getting Started

Okay, your foundations are printed, and you're ready to get going. The things that I'm going to show you next make it much easier, and it's part of why foundation paper piecing is successful. This is that paper I was showing you, this is the stuff that I purchased. It's foundation paper. And you'll notice something really interesting about it. I'm going to cut these apart. Now, when I print these, I've printed four at a time, because that's how many would fit. Now, to do that I just make a copy of one and put it next to the original, et cetera et cetera, until I have a master sheet that has four on it. And then I run my photo copies. Okay, if you're using a product like this, you'll find that you can bend really easily on the line. So what I can do is I can look at it, I'll probably do it this way. I'll just keep it, I've got it wrong side down, and I'm just going to come along about there, and it folds really easily. And like I said, I wonder if it's something to do with the ink. So before I would start actually piecing, I would go ahead and fold all these guys. And the reason I'm doing that is because it's going to make it easier to remove the paper later. One of the things that people don't like about paper piecing or that they've had problems with in the past, and they think, "Well I'm never doing that again.", is because it's hard to get the paper off at the end. Well there are a couple of things that make it really easy. The thing that I like best I perforating, I'm going to show you that in a second. So I'll go ahead and fold all these. Now if you're having a hard time getting it to fold on the line, you can use a postcard, any postcard, a playing card, anything like that. And what I would do, or what I do is, you can either do it from the front, or from the back. I just put that postcard right on the line, like that, and bend right over there, and crease it. So once I have all those bent, it's going to be easier for me to remove the paper. Okay, so I can do that with all of these. Same thing, fold on all of those, or perforating, which is my favorite way to go, and here's why. This is one of the flying geese sheet, and if I turn it over, you see all those perforations? Well, what those do, with paper piecing, you're working from the back. When you're arranging where your fabric is going to be, it helps you to see where you're going, because if you have just a plain paper pattern, like this, and you haven't perforated it, it's kind of hard to tell. And if you're holding it up trying to see is that going to work, and maybe you're holding it up to the light and you're trying to see if it's big enough, it can be really hard. So this gives you a size on the back, so you know when you're trying to determine if a fabric piece you've cut is big enough, you can actually see it. And you can feel it right through the paper. Your fingers are going to feel that and it's going to turn in to be a handy thing. Plus, when I've sewn through all these and perforated it, what I've done is made, of course, holes. Well then you're going to go ahead and stitch on those lines again, when you're actually piecing, and what that does is it makes it so easy to take them off. Because by the time you're done it just comes right away, it's not hard to remove the foundation at all. So in order to perforate, I know that sounds really weird, what I'm going to do is I've got all these sheets of, you know, one of my units. And I'm going to just stack them up. I have found that I can go through five or six at a time, but what do you have to do? You have to make darn sure they're all the same direction. So I'm going to turn and I'm just going to make sure, because oops. As a matter of fact, just last night I was perforating some, and I perforated three sheets the wrong way, because I perforated them with the wrong one on top. Okay, so I've got my little stack, and I'm going to take a stapler, and I'm just going to staple through the whole stack like that. Now I want to staple a ways away from the outer line of my seam line, so it's easy to cut these guys apart. Okay, like that, and like that, and I'll just put a couple here. It doesn't have to be perfect, okay? And they're all held together, so when I perforate through here, it's going to come all the way through, and they'll all be done at once. Because perforating, you know, it can seem a little tedious, and it is, but the thing about it is, when you stack it up this way, it goes really quickly. So what I'm going to do now is get my machine, and I'm going to get an old, dull sewing machine needle, because that's what you're going to need. And I'll be right back. All right, it's time to perforate the foundations, and you're going to find this a lot easier than it may sound. Now I have this needle here, I know it's dull, and I go ahead and store it with the good needles, because it's a different type. You see how it has that little blue and green? I know that's the dull one. So I'm just going to go ahead and put that in now. Make sure you have a dull needle, it's very sad if you don't. Okay. Then the other thing I'm going to do, I'm going to change my foot. I'm taking that quarter inch foot off, and I'm going to put on an open toe foot, or just a regular foot so I can see better. Because that quarter inch foot can make it hard for me to see, I want to be able to see what I'm doing. And take out the bobbin case, just take it out. You don't want any thread, there's no thread on the machine at all. Old needle and a foot I can see well with. Speaking of seeing, let me get my glasses to do this. All right, I am going to take one of these things, this is my six layers of foundation, and I'll staple together. And what I'm going to do, I'm going to perforate all of the solid lines, or all of the lines, this might be dashed in some patterns, not the seam allowance line, but every other line. Because when you're pulling that paper off, you want it perforated along this outer edge, because that's something you're tearing. And when you're sewing, you'll see you're going to start, on some of these, you're going to start outside that seam allowance and go all the way through. Okay, so it doesn't matter where I start. I'm just going to start, it makes a lot of noise sometimes. It's important to do this accurately. If you don't perforate right on the line, you're going to be sad, because then when you go to bend your paper, it's not on the right line, and then your seam isn't going to be in the right place, and your points won't be where you want them to be. So this is all I'm doing, I'm stitching along the lines, just like that. And see how I've got this folded up? You don't have to be worrying about the paper. Now I am a fan of books on tape, or you know, Audible, something like that. I put a book on when I'm doing this. I don't watch football games when I'm doing this, because I can find myself messing up. Gee, I wonder why. Okay, now here I'm going to do, I'm going to go across one of these seams. And this is where I need to line this up. I'm starting outside the seam allowance there, and I'm just going to make a line right along there. It's okay if it's not absolutely perfect in the seam allowance, it's really hard to do that. But I'm just going to let my machine. You'll find out how true your feet dogs are if you just kind of let the machine feed it through. You see how it came all the way through? Started over here and ended over here. You're going to do the same thing here, just kind of cut it. In my head, picture that line going out a little further. Okay, and just sew. It's okay, as I said, it's not going to be perfect once you get into that seam allowance, but it'll be close enough, and it just helps you to fold your paper the way you want it. Okay, I'm almost done with this one. And this is one with lot of lines, so it may look like it's taking a lot of time. You'll be surprised at how quickly you can do all of these. And right now because I have six sheets and each block takes four of these units, I'm doing, every one of these blocks, I'm doing this unit for every single block once. Okay, same here. Whoops. Okay. Okay, now did I get them all? Look on the back. Oops, nope. Now go ahead and check. Okay, come on, baby, there we go. You can see why you want a dull needle for this. Because how fast would this ruin a good needle? Really fast. Okay. And the reason you take the whole bobbin case out is because there's no point in having it turning with nothing on it. If you happen to leave thread in there and you just don't think about it, you might find yourself a little tangle, but it comes out when you take out the bobbin case. It's not okay, though, to leave thread. Like if you have thread up here, don't leave it in the tension discs and just take it out of the needle, it'll make an absolute disaster. Take it completely off. Okay, now I can look and see did I perforate them all? Yes I did. Okay, so I will go ahead and do all of these. Now what I'm going to show you now, all I need to do, is cut them out. Do not cut through the staples, because that would be very sad. Your scissors, that would be the end of them. There. And of course, normally I would do the whole sheet at once, but I don't have to do that right now. And here they are, all set and ready to go. Look at all those. See? And it's going to be so easy, and look, I came here, and I see there's one line missing, so what do I do? Because they're perforated, believe it or not, they fit back together just like a puzzle, perfectly, because of the holes. And I can just run that last line without even stapling them back together. And you'll see what I mean. Tada, look at that. See how I have to pry them apart again because of the holes holding them together. And there's that last line. So you just go ahead and do that with all of your foundations. All right, so you have all of your pieces perforated, and next time we're going to start playing with the fabric. You're just going to love it, it's really exciting to see how they come out.