A friend of mine loaned me a book (Quick Watercolor Quilt's by Dina Pappas) for the section on piecing with interfacing. Where you lay out all your fabric square adhere them to gridded interfacing and then sewing it all together. First does it really work like they say? And second, it seems a little like "cheating", of course it's not because there's no right way to quilt, still I just don't know about this techinque, any opinions?

I've done it and it's okay. Things still don't necessarily line up perfectly and the perfectionist in me would rather piece it the regular way. It makes things a bit stiffer, too.

i got this book and made one. i loved the method for a change of pace.
it was easy and fun to piece it together for the effect you want to achieve.
i had mine machine quilted. i don't think it could be easily hand quilted.
all in all i enjoyed doing it and someday i will make another.
i say go for it.

I love this technique- in fact am working on a quilt right now using the fusible interfacing. Basically using 4 x 4 inch blocks and 2 inch sashings and doing a nine patch on 20 inch pieces of fusible interfacing. When I get it done, I'll post a picture to show you. To me its just another method to quilt and its perfectly legal. Go for it :):):)

I love this method too. It takes a little time to maneuver the individual squares onto the fusible interfacing and the larger the desired size of the quilt, the larger the interfacing, but it is so much faster than piecing the individual squares together one by one. I have made three quilts using this method and would definitely do it again.

Thanks for your imput, my current project I'm a couple of blocks into and I think I will continue to hand piece it, an idea for another time I suppose. :wink:

I was just watching America Quilts Creatively and they were showing how to make a Lone Star Quilt using the interfacing. They used it like paper piecing and after each piece was sewn on they fused it down in place. Once each strip was complete, you fold the interfacing and stitched on the line to connect the strips. The diamonds and points were all perfect. Then instead of setting in the corner blocks, they pieced triangles to each diamond block and when you sewed all the pieces together you could not tell that it was not pieced in the regular way.

I used the Quiltsmart interfacing to do my Lone Star throw, and was so impressed that I bought the kit for the Broken Lone Star quilt. It is easy once you get the hang of it. I liked working with rectangles of fabric instead of stretchy diamonds, and its easy to get into a rhythm of glue, stitch, flip and fuse. The interfacing does add a bit of weight, but it is really thin and I really don't notice it on the finished throw (even when I free-motion quilted it.) I posted the throw here: http://www.quiltingboard.com/posts/list/5650.page

I have a couple more of the kits, but haven't done them yet. I'm definitely a fan of the method tho!

I like the Quiltsmart. A friend turned me on to it. She's been using it to do Wedding Ring Quilts and loves it!
I just wish I could buy it here. Would be much cheaper for me.

Cathy, could you explain more.....Today at my guild meeting I made my FIRST of about 200 4" blocks on 'vilene', its come out lovely, but I was concerned about the extra bulk at the seams, especially where points meet, so I would love to know how you multiply up and are you foundation piecing them together????? :D :D