Hi stevendebbie25,
Well I am with you on not liking the job of cutting out the patterns. When this is done, you are likely to have some that are cut crooked than you are with buying the lazer cut ones.
I have made several Dresden Plates in different sizes, a grandmothers flower garden, a couple of star quilts and some with diamonds (in my ufo collection)
When you get the hang of basting the fabric onto the template you can go quite quickly making them. Anyway, the lazer cut templates are reusable quite a few times. And the way you do it is to lay whatever fabric you are going to use face down and lay the template on top of it Your fabric needs to have the 1/4 inch seam allowance figured in and that 1/4" is what you turn over onto the template. What I do is put a small pin in the center to hold the 2 pieces together and then cut around the template (remember the 1/4 extra. I just hold the shape in my hand and fold over and do a basting stitch through the paper and fabric. When you get to a corner, just fold it over and keep on basting around.
Is this clear as mud to you at this point?
You leave the paper in the piece until it has been attached to another piece and the pattern is what decides this.
The Dresden Plate comes in several sizes. I have one on my table ready to baste for hand quilting.
This one has 16 paper pieced parts and they are whip stitch together to form a circle and then appliqued onto a block. After it is appliques onto the block, then you can take the paper out. This is one of my favorite patterns.
paperpieces.com is a nice site that has lots of different shaped templates and these are more exact than the ones y ou cut your self.
Well till next lesson, I hope this will answer some of your questions.
It was nice to be able to pass on some of my "knowledge" lol to someone else to use. Happy EE Paper Piecing.
Pat
homecaregiver