In my experience, there
is a large amount of waste with paper piecing. I have found that I can minimize the waste by not cutting my fabric pieces smaller than about 3-4" wide by 6-8" long at the beginning. This way you sort of "nibble" away at each fabric piece without pre-cutting it into shapes that are inevitably almost-but-not-quite the right size. The downside to this approach is that it makes assembly-line piecing of multiple similar blocks awkward, because you have large and floppy bits of fabric hanging off your foundation until you finally trim the last edges.
I like the idea of the confetti quilt/fusible foundation block use for all of the little cut off scraps (
here).
Alison