Originally Posted by seamstome
Ok here's a little trick that works for me. Think of your pp'ing like a party. A piece of paper and a piece of fabric come to the party.
Fabric likes fabric and paper likes paper. The first piece of fabric gives the paper the "cold shoulder" so the "right side" of the fabric faces out and so does the printed side of the paper so they dont have to "talk". You have to pin or glue them together because they dont like each other.
Then the second piece of fabric arrives at the party she wants to talk to the first piece of paper and gossip behind the paper's back so they are face to face or right sides together on the backside of the paper. Sew, flip, trim.
Then another piece of fabric comes to the party, he wants to chat up the second piece of fabric so they are face to face talking. Sew flip trim and repeat.
Just keep adding to the fabric party while the paper is left all by himself.
The hardest problem that I have with pp'ing is making sure the pieces are big enough when they are oriented on an angle.
Regarding you last sentence:
If you cut a strip, just measure from the line where that strip joins the previous one, add seam allow. plus 1/8" for your cut strip width. So if piece #2 measures 2" wide add 5/8" to that for all your seam allow. and cut a strip 2 5/8" wide. If you are using a patterned fabric,especially a stripe, this orientation of the fabric might turn out to look different than you'd originally planned. A little trial and error occurs. It's preferable to be sewing on the straight grain VS bias, but that sometimes happens or bias edges are on the outside of the block. That's why they say to leave the paper on until blocks are sewn together, then remove the paper, or remove the paper in your seam allow. area, sew the blocks together and then remove the remaining paper from each block.