Shrinkage in Freezer paper
 

OK - so who knew?? lol Thought I would pass this on ....

We had a presentation and workshop at guild last week on English Paper Piecing. One of the gals had finished (as she commented) her project of her lifetime - a King sized Grandmothers Flower Garden which hung to the floor. Her foundation of choice was freezer paper. As she was talking about the trials and tribulations of hand piecing such an enormous quilt - she commented on the distortion of freezer paper after ironing. All of us had that deer in the headlight look on our faces!! WOW - who could have even imagined this? Another GUild member agreed and talked about "pre shrinking" her freezer paper by stacking several layers together and ironing them.

I went googling when I got home - and found MANY hits about this. I am guessing for the few large pieces that I do this minuscule shrinkage would not affect my results. However in a large project where there are multiple small pieces all of which are connected to one another - this would be a problem as the sizes might be not as you anticipated. Also, different manufactures shrink at different rates AND in different directions!!

This was one of the BEST articles that I found .. so here is the link.

http://cedarcanyontextiles.com/freez...s-best-friend/

Oh my gosh, I wouldn't have thought paper would shrink! Thanks for the info!

Same here I never would of thought that freezer paper would shrink and different one in different directions! I've used it for years doing paper piecing but I have always used one of the wooden hand irons instead of heat! Thank you!

Thank you for giving us this information. I just bought some to start a quilt, I will sure be careful with it now as I had never heard that before and have never used large amounts before.

As I did not know this either - I figured that others might not know this and ought to - lol. My feeble attempts of applique are not critical but I know that for others that do tiny stuff this might be. Glad I could help.

I took a class from Sharon Schamber when she was starting out quilt teaching years ago. Shrinking freezer paper is one of many wonderful tips I have really used. I always do 2 layers as they make it much easier to fold the fabric over the paper and the templates last much longer.

I hope I remember this information and use two layers also! sounds like sound advice!

Thanks for posting this! I have used it, not noticed anything, but not doing pieces where a tiny shift would be noticed.

Forewarned is forearmed!
:)

Forgot to say how to shrink freezer paper. I spritz it with a spray bottle. I place mine on the teflon pressing sheet so the waxy side stay waxy. I know it isnt really wax but best way to describe it!

I have used freezer as part of several projects, however, I didn't know about it shrinking. Thank you for sharing this information.