Paper piecing designs(designer)
 

In your opinion, which paper piecing designer writes the best directions? I love Judy Niemeyer but I find her directions a bit confusing. I don't want to have to take a class on all her designs just to do them. I haven't tried any others and that's why I'm asking you. I hope this question is ok for this forum.
Joan

In my opinion, Carol Doak has the best paper piecing instructions.

Carol Doak is the best..and she was lots of free patterns on her website. She did a class for our quilt guild, and although I have been paper piecing for several years, I took the class and really enjoyed it

Carol Doak...every time

I began with Carol Doak and she is still my go to designer :)

Judy in Phx, AZ

I took a class with Neimeyer's pattern and i have yet to finish it. still, i love her quilts.

I love Judy Niemeyer's designs, but I agree that her directions are not that good. Every time I make one of her quilt I spend a lot of time up front figuring out which fabric corresponds to which part of the quilt so I can decide what fabrics to use. On the last one, her directions called for 5 or 6 different dark fabrics, but in the picture of the quilt on the pattern she used only one. The quilt looked great with the one fabric (which was mottled) in place of all the others, but the directions suffered because of it.

I believe that you only need to learn paper piecing once, and Carol Doak is apparently the best one to teach that. (I didn't learn from her books - I took a class at a LQS.) After that, you just need to have the papers (marked with the order and fabrics to use for piecing), clear description of the fabric quantities (and where they go), and instructions that tell you what size pieces to efficiently cut from each fabric, and how those the paper pieced units go together. It frustrates me when a pattern gives you piece by piece instructions. Still, I think Judy Niemeyer's patterns are gorgeous and I will continue to make them, grumbling every time the instructions regarding fabric placement are muddled.

And the WINNER IS........Carol Doak by a landslide!! hahaha

Carol Doak is by far the best. I can get confused sometimes by directions, but she is awesome. Never have been confused once by her directions!

Carol Doak

I agree, Carol Doak is my favorite!!!

I did a Judy N. quilt and had to read the instructions several times, but I learned alot using her templates and love her patterns. The quilt turned out perfect.

Totally agree - Carol Doak is the BEST.

I have done several Judy Niemeyer's as you can see by my avatar. The last one the directions were bad and I wasted alot of fabric, time and money. Makes me shy away from another. BTW, I read that she has improved directions for the one I had problems with which is good. I cant imagine writing directions for all of that.