I have tried the official paper piecing paper, newsprint, those cheap kids tablets for drawing and practicing writing, typing paper, and phone books. Gotta say, the typing was the worse to rip off and by far, and I mean by far, the cheapest, easiest to rip off and to cut to desired size was the old phone book pages. Now, it can be diffiuclt to find the phone books with the bigger pages or even any old phone book. If you can get your hands on one, go for it. Oh, and the "aged" phone books work even better.