Some year I'm going to do a tumbling blocks quilt. The prettiest one I've seen uses paper piecing (I don't care for the strip method because I don't want seams on the block "tops"). So I'm wondering if its terribly difficult or just moderately annoying? Anybody really like it?

love it

I am in the process of learning to PP "Thank You Quilt "moms" I hate the mess it makes from all the little pieces and I hate picking out all that paper but the blocks are beautiful when they are done, So I have to say I have a love hate relationship with it. I am currently looking for something for paper that is easy to pick out- probably no such thing, I used June Taylor and is is like interfacing I have some Carol Doaks that is like newsprint. It didn't help my block had 20 units to it!

I love it. It's a little difficult at first but not bad. I did a king size quilt doing paper piece, 120 blocks, 8 inch blocks.

I love to paper piece and I don't usually have any paper to "pick out". I use a very small stitch, and when I am ready to remove the paper, I just fold it along the stitch line first and then it tears right off, leaving nothing behind to have to pick out.

I also used a very small stitch but being new, Picking stitches out of those pieces is a bugger maybe it was the type of paper I used. I broke 2 seam rippers ripping stitches.

I love freezer paper piecing. It irons on and you don't sew through it, so you can use normal stitch length and simply peel it off afterwards. There's a great tutorial here:

http://www.twiddletails.com/store/in...age=page&id=21

Freezer paper piecing is the method Judy Mathieson now recommends in her book Mariner's Compass - Setting a New Course. One difference to the tute above: she stacks several pieces of freezer paper and sews through them with her machine with an unthreaded needle. The perforation does the same thing as making creases as in the tute, except you catch several layers at once.

I tried traditional foundation piecing (the one with sewing through the paper) once. Hated it. With a passion.
Little pieces to pick out between seams in every sharp point; the foundation coming apart every time I needed to take out a seam... well it tears easily, that's the point isn't it... but for me at least it didn't hold up when I used my seam ripper.

I have learned it, still practicing it, maybe eventually I'll love it. Right now I do like the result, although it still seems clumsy to me, but it's my clumsiness. So, again, with practice.....

You can't beat the points you get from PP. If you use a small stitch and cheapie paper, it's not even so bad tearing paper. It is messy, but nothing a broom can handle.

PP is beautiful but it scares me to death :lol: :lol: