One of the more obvious ways to save on fabric waste is to use batiks for a lot of the paper pieced projects. If you use regular cottons and there is a left and right to a pattern, if you do not stack your fabrics correctly and then try to precut to a template...you might have wrecked a lot of fabric. If you do not try to devise a generous template and just use larger than needed blocks of fabric to be safe and not have to think as much about what you are doing ( with paper piecing there is a lot of thinking)...then you are likely to have a lot of scraps. The thing about Judy Niemeyer is that she does the templates for you and that does SAVE on waste, but once you do one of her quilts you can apply that approach to any future project. Paper piecing is a different concept entirely...it is like quilting in a mirror. The other thing that "bugs" people about this process is those small stitches ( hard to rip and ripping is almost impossible to avoid) and then tearing away the paper. If you use the flip and sew freezer paper technique, you can apply this technique to any paper pieced pattern and use a glue stick to adhere the new sewn part to the newsprint ( that duplicates the waxy function on freezer paper) and when you are done you simply peal away the newsprint and you still have the original pattern to use again. The big thing about paper piecing is that it allows you to achieve a look that only the best of the best can possibly make without it...so you might waste a little, but look what you have to show for your efforts in the end!