When I was thinking about a way to make this month's paper-foundation-piecing block pattern for the Block Lotto in a non-paper-piecing way, my first thought was, "freezer paper." I'll tell you what I did and how it worked for me, but first, some eye candy–my butterfly blocks for the Block Lotto (top three) and for my rainbow scraps sampler (bottom four).
One of these butterfly blocks is NOT like the others ... because it wasn't paper pieced.
I started by printing the foundation pattern on an 8 1/2 by 11-inch piece of freezer paper (which I had earlier cut and weighted to make it flat enough to make my printer happy.
Then I carefully cut the pattern apart on the lines.
Because the left and right sides of the butterfly are mirror images of each other, I only cut apart one side and the center.
I then ironed my freezer paper templates to the wrong side of the appropriate fabrics. The fabrics that make up the two sides of the butterfly are folded right-sides-together. Using a ruler and a rotary cutter, I added 1/4-inch to each edge and cut all the pieces I need ... until I realize that one of the pieces I cut from background should have been orange. Oops.
I sewed the pieces together in the numbered order–the same order as you would add the fabrics to the foundation, if you were paper-piecing the block.Your mileage may differ, but I still managed to goof and sew the first two small triangles together the wrong way on one side. I chalked it up to my spatial dyslexia.
Because I didn't trim the extended seam lines of the points, aligning some of the pieces was a little tricky and some caution was needed there, but the block went together quite quickly.
After each side and the center was sewn, it went together just as it's foundation pieced version. The first block was probably more of an effort for me than just paper piecing the block and felt a little less precise than a paper pieced block, but when I was done, I liked the result, I liked having no paper to remove and I found myself thinking about making the blocks for my Old MacDonald's Mystery Sampler using this technique.
And ... I have now used freezer paper in yet another way for quilting ;-)
5 comments:
This looks so doable with the freezer paper, thanks for showing us how it goes together. I know all about spatial dyslexia and that's why I've avoided paper piecing all these years.
Thanks for the warnings on tricky spots. I still think I will try it if I have time.
How did you weigh down the freezer paper?
This looks a good alternative to the paper piecing and you have some beautiful orange fabrics for the butterflies.
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