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General Hints

Stitch Length

If you are using regular copy paper or vellum for your project, you will need to shorten your stitch length. You don’t want to shorten it so much that if you end up having to rip out stitches, you also rip the fabric. If you are using the recommended foundation paper, there is no need to worry about shortening the stitches since you won't be removing the paper. You can use the default stitch on your machine.

The Piecing Factor

Everyone has their own personal preferences and thoughts when it comes to piecing. One person may choose to rip out a seam several times to get it perfect while others are quite content if their piecing is “off” by a thread or two. We understand and respect each person’s choice and all those in between!

Chain Piecing

We recommend making one block to learn the technique. Once you understand and are comfortable with the way we foundation piece, you will (if you are comfortable doing so) be able to chain piece the arc foundations. We usually work on four to six blocks at a time.

Quilt Yardage

Many of the quilts in this book offer you the opportunity to incorporate your own interpretation and design elements into them. The instructions we provide for each quilt are what we used for the quilt design shown. That said, we have also built in some extra yardage into the fabric requirements to allow you to have a little extra in the event that you wish to incorporate your own design elements. Backing fabric yardage provided assumes that you will be piecing the back together with a vertical seam. Binding fabric yardage provided is calculated for 2½" (6.35cm) wide binding strips.

Starching

Whether or not to starch your fabrics is a personal preference. We like to heavily starch our fabrics. Think…“Starched is good…Crispy is better!” This is especially true for the pie shape since the starch will help keep any stretching or distortion under control. Our starch of preference is Niagara Spray Starch in a pump bottle, but others will also work.

Rulers and Cutters

We have found that the 9½" (24.13cm) Omnigrid® ruler works great. In fact, the only rulers we use are the 6" x 24" (15.24 x 60.96cm) ruler for strips, and the 9½" (24.13cm) square for everything else! It fits your hand so there is minimal slippage, and can fit in your purse. When cutting multiple layers, we like to use a 45mm cutter. You can grip it better to apply enough pressure to make a nice clean cut. Change your blade if you find your cuts are not going through all the layers of fabric.

Templates for Pie and Background Shapes

You can either make your own or you can purchase a kit that contains reusable foundation piecing stencils, and custom-made acrylic templates. If you are making your own templates, use heavy weight template plastic. See here for instructions on Preparing the Pie and Background Shapes.

Foundation Paper

There are many different types of foundation paper on the market, and you are welcome to use the paper of your choice. Our paper of preference, of course, is our foundation paper, available at www.froghollowdesigns.com. We like it because it can be left in the quilt and that means no more ripping out the paper.

Frog Hollow Designs foundation paper will soften up over time, and will become a thin layer of polyester inside the quilt if washed. It can also go through your printer.

If you choose another type of foundation paper, we recommend using a Vellum or translucent foundation paper. The translucent paper is what makes this technique so easy, rather than the standard printer paper.

If you are using foundation paper that must be removed, do not remove it until you have sewn the block into the quilt. To remove, you can spritz the area with water to soften up the paper to make it easier to remove.

Copier Distortion

It happens…all copiers are not created equal. Before you copy your entire package of foundation paper, make one copy of the pattern and check the measurements. This applies not just to this pattern, but to every foundation pattern that you may use. If you copy something at home, and then go into work to use the work copier, you may find that the copies are not the same size. Try to copy all the patterns on the same copier for consistency.

Choosing Fabrics

Choosing fabric for a quilt is a personal choice. You may be choosing for a specific decor of a room, or perhaps the favorite colors of the recipient. To give you an idea of how we choose fabrics, we will use the fabrics that we chose for the step-out samples.

Scanning

Pay attention if you choose this option. Make sure that when you print the pattern, you are printing actual size and not “fit to page.”

Alternative to Copying

You may wish to consider the New York Beauty Quilt kit available on our website that contains a laser-cut, reusable foundation stencil. Trace the pattern onto the foundation paper using a Pigma pen.

Linda found this seashell batik print that she really loved (now that she lives in Florida). Since the background piece of the block is the most visible, we decided to use this fabric as the focus fabric.

The teal solid is for the background spires since we wanted those to blend into the background to make the spires more prominent.

We chose the berry solid for the spires as it is a color pulled from the seashell print.

The small dotted pink print is for the pie and has some of the colors from the seashell print.

Directional fabric, stripes or large prints, do not work well for this technique. These fabrics can be incorporated into the sashing or borders.