Economy Block Foundation Paper Piecing for Beginners! Lets Make a Crumb Scrap Quilt for 2021!

so if you've known me for a while you know that i love scraps i make a lot of scrap quilts but they just keep accumulating especially these really tiny ones because they are a little more difficult to use so in 2021 i'm setting myself a personal challenge to make a dent in my scrap stash so to do this i have designed an economy block half block study half scrap quilt kind of project i have my economy blocks here and they are in eight different sizes all the way from two inch blocks all the way up to six inch blocks now we're going to be doing foundation paper piecing for these blocks and this is a very beginner friendly foundation paper piecing block because it's all in one piece there aren't any intersecting seams so it's gonna be very easy to put this block together if you've never done foundation paper piecing this is a great place to start now i do love foundation paper piecing for using scraps because you can kind of use them as they are you don't need to trim them down to make them a perfect size and that really cuts down on kind of the time invested in making a scrap quilt because there's no uh prep of the scraps other than making sure they're kind of flat so let's talk about what you need for foundation paper piecing obviously you'll need a printer and some paper to print the pattern out on i've designed this pattern so that there's only one size block on each page so that if you do want to make a quilt that's all one size of blocks you can print just that size i have printed mine out on newsprint and this is a really great paper choice you can buy this in reams from a local office supply store or an amazon and it will go right through your printer like normal paper i keep this on hand i have one of those dual tray printers so i just have a tray of newsprint available all the time so i can print these out really easily i've gone ahead and printed all of the pages that are in the pattern but if you want to make a specific size and you're going to determine your size based on the size of your scraps if you have mostly little teeny tiny scraps then you're going to need to make smaller blocks because the size area available for each little piece of our foundation paper piecing pattern is smaller in the smaller blocks so if i wanted to make six inch blocks but my scraps are mainly this size it's going to be really difficult or impossible or i'm going to have to piece them first and then do the block so if you have bigger scraps you can make a bigger block if you have little tiny scraps then you might want to look at the smaller blocks i think that i'm going to do a variety of block sizes and mix and match them if you would like to do the same you can use all the sizes or you can stick to the sizes that match up really well you can do six inch blocks and nine two inch blocks and those will match up really nicely or you can use the five inch blocks and the two and a half inch blocks whatever fits your scrap collection best in addition to the designs in the pattern there is also a page of instructions for you to print out just to kind of have close by if you have never foundation paper pieced before you will also need a source of light i have uh my light box here so i can turn this light on and see through the paper pretty easily but you don't have to have a light box a bright window a sliding glass door any source of light even holding it up to your overhead light will work there are a few nice to have items if you are doing foundation paper piecing and one of them is this add a quarter ruler it looks like just a normal ruler but it does have this ridge on the back if you've ever used a block lock ruler it's kind of that same concept this ridge kind of slides along and kind of nests along your seam line and just makes it easier to kind of cut and trim as we're working it's totally not necessary you can use a regular rotary cutting ruler for this you'll just have to line up visually that line instead of kind of using it by feel these rulers come in a few different sizes if you are doing mainly small blocks then you can get away with using this little six inch ruler it comes in a 12 inch size as well i bought these as a two pack it also comes in this gigantic like 18 inch size um i bought this and i don't think i've ever used it because it's kind of unwieldy but surely there's gonna come an occasion where i'm gonna need this but um yeah i ordered it and it came and it was just bigger than i thought it was going to be even though i knew that it was 18 inches but anyway i have it i would stick to the six and 12 inch sizes you may also want to consider using a larger diameter needle in your machine as you are piecing these pieces together we will be sewing through the paper and if you use a larger needle then it pokes a bigger hole in your paper and will make it easier to tear later it's not necessary you can go ahead and use the needle that's already in your machine you will need to change it after you are done foundation paper piecing because sewing through paper does dull your needle really quickly so this isn't the time for like your super sharpest needle i usually just kind of reuse whatever needle was in my machine and then change it after i'm done sewing another tip before we get started is to go ahead and reduce the stitch length on your machine like using the bigger needle we'll make a bigger hole reducing your stitch length will just make it easier to tear the paper away later so that's enough of prep let's get started the first thing we're going to need to do is print the pattern and then on every page there is a one inch block printed on the pattern this one inch block serves as a check for your printer if you want all these blocks to match up then you want to make sure that you're printing them at the actual size they're designed to be so just take a moment with a ruler and just measure that one inch block and make sure that it actually does measure one inch if it measures seven eighths or one and an eighth then you'll need to make sure that you are printing your pattern with no scaling and or actual size the language may vary a little bit based on your printer but you don't want to be printing at anything other than 100 or no scaling and that should help you get that one inch so grab your paper scissors and we're just going to cut out these blocks you can see that i just rough cut these you don't have to cut exactly on this line you just want to be able to see that outer kind of ring around the block that's going to help you uh trim your block to size including the seam allowance that you'll need to sew it to all of its little friends so the next thing we want to do is pre-fold the lines on our block as we sew this block together we're going to be folding this little piece of paper a couple of times and it's just a little easier to get those fold lines kind of pre-folded when there's not a bunch of fabric in the way so all i'm doing is i place my square kind of print side down and fold up until i see one of the lines so i'm folding between one and two and one and four and one and three and one and five so i'm just folding it back until i kind of see that line up here and then folding so that line is right on the edge of the crease and then i'm going to do the same thing for these outer triangles pre-folding isn't absolutely necessary i just find that it saves me a little frustration when i'm sewing and it only takes a minute so i'll often print out a bunch of my squares and cut them and fold them while i'm sitting in front of the tv so let's talk a little bit about color selection for your economy blocks traditionally an economy block will have one color in the center one color that forms these pieces two three four five and then a third color that has all four of the outer triangles you can certainly follow that pattern you will need to select scraps from your pile that can cover all four of the pieces that you want to have the same size or you can just go with like a color tone have a green center these four pieces orange and then blue for the outer triangles and they don't necessarily have to match each other but if they're all the same color then it will still like visually look like an economy block i think that i'm going to do a little bit of a mix here and i'm going to choose one color to be the center and the outer pieces and then i am going to use my low volume crumbs to be this kind of four part middle round um i have a lot of low volume scraps to use up so that's kind of why i'm going this direction so you can really go in any direction you want to go with with your scraps i encourage you to take a look at your scraps and kind of see what you have the most of and what colors you like together and just go with it i think i'm gonna end up with kind of a rainbow color assortment of scraps that are all tied together with that low volume kind of middle tier and then once i've made a pile i'll arrange them somehow probably in a rainbow because my kid loves rainbows but for right now i'm going to start sewing now that we are all folded up i'm going to turn on my light box and we're going to start picking out fabric and sewing this block so you will always be looking at the printed side of this block this square piece of paper that we're looking at and you're going to be assembling your fabric block on the back side of this piece of paper this is one of those sewing techniques where once you do it a few times it'll kind of click but when you initially try to learn it everything seems really backwards so let's go through it one step at a time we are going to be sewing and assembling this block in the number order so we start with number one and then we'll be sewing one to two so i want my center square to be aqua so i'm just gonna pick a scrap of fabric that i think will look good in the middle and the only rules here are that it needs to cover this number one square with some seam allowance around it the lines that we're looking at are actually the front of the block that's how they're gonna go together so you can see we have all of our nice little points here but you know we need extra fabric to sew all these pieces together so i have my light box on so i can kind of lay down this piece of fabric and i can see the outline of the square here there's plenty of extra fabric around that square so i'm going to go ahead and use this piece i'm going to place my first piece of fabric face down print side down on my light box and then i'm going to place my pattern on top of it and center it so i can see the fabric extending past all the lines of that center square i'm going to stick a pin in this just to hold it in place you can hold it with your fingers you can put a little dot of glue like a sewing glue or a little dot of elmer's glue i like to have a couple of pins and i will reuse these pins the whole time i'm doing this paper piecing and then i will throw that pin away because after it's stuck through paper that many times it's going to be really dull so i have kind of two pins on the side of my little pin area here my little pin magnetic guide thing and i'll just keep using those two and then throw them away now that we have our number one print here now we need to pick the fabrics for this first ring of triangles so two three four and five so i have quite a bit of this kind of sparkly essex linen so i think i'll use that for these four pieces these are a little bit wrinkly so i think i'm gonna give them a quick press you only really need to press your fabric if it's really wrinkly um i don't always but but i do like to have my fabric nice and straight so i do maybe press a little bit more than other people so we're going to take our block and we're going to fold at that one to two line so this little line and since we've already folded it it folds really easily now we can see kind of the reverse image of our number two area in our block we're gonna pick up our block our paper block and the fabric that it's pinned to and i'm gonna set it down on the fabric i want that number two area to be and what i'm looking for here is the fabric that i'm using to completely cover that number two area that's folded down with seam allowance all the way around it so i have plenty of extra right here it extends to the sides way past that triangle and it's really long so i'm not even worried about that dimension so i'm ready to go i can stick my little pin out and get it through both layers for a little security or you can just kind of hold it in your hand but we're going to fold this paper flat and we're going to take the whole thing the paper and both layers of fabric over to our sewing machine so now we're ready to sew i have my sewing machine set up with a very small stitch length my machine is set to one and all those tiny stitches are going to make it easy to remove this paper when the time comes so i am going to sew the entire length of the line that separates area one from area two i'm not gonna sew beyond it i'm not gonna add a little bit here and there i'm gonna sew just from tip to tip i'm just gonna line up my needle right where that line begins and sew until it ends you certainly can use your back stitch here if you would like a lot of extra security but it's not necessary i usually don't and i've never had a problem with my blocks just take it really nice and slow and stay on that line and keep stitching having that tiny stitch length will also help with your accuracy as far as hitting the points that um make up the beginning and end of your line and now we need to trim the extra fabric that is in our seam allowance and here's where that add a quarter ruler comes in handy i'm gonna fold down that number two to one seam line that we folded down before and i am going to use my little add a quarter ruler and that lip on the back of the ruler kind of catches on that paper fold and if i had a rotary cut oh here it is and now i can use my rotary cutter to just trim off that extra having a trash can right behind your sewing area is really beneficial in favor piecing because you are going to end up with a lot of tiny little pieces so i have mine right down here under my table okay we can fold our paper back and now we can flip our block over and you can see our pieces are sewn together even though you can't really see my seam line because i used sparkly white fabric but now we can press this fabric back and it's just like pressing any seam that you would press to the side uh you can't press open when you're paper piecing which you know i love to do but um this block i would press to the side anyway because there's not any intersecting seams so i'm just going to press this open so i have pressed the seam open and i have a bunch of extra fabric sticking out that i can just trim down remember i only need this white fabric to cover that little triangle here so i know that all of this is outside the bounds of my block so i can freely cut that off so let's flip it back to our working side and we have sewn two and so now we need to sew three we are going to fold from the one to three line and i always tend to orient the fold away from me for some reason and we're just going to repeat that step i'm going to place this on my fabric and then make sure that that white fabric that i just placed completely covers that three triangle right here this is one of those times where i can see it really well but maybe you cannot so my three triangle is folded down and it's right here and i can see that this white fabric completely covers it so open it back up you could stick a pin in here if you need to but i'm just gonna pinch it move it over to my sewing machine and again i'm gonna sew just that line that connects one to three now the next step is always trim i'm going to fold one to three back trim off that extra and in this situation my seam allowance for that white fabric was just a little shy of a quarter of an inch and i'm not worried about it as long as there's at least an eighth of an inch kind of beyond your stitch line it's gonna be secure enough for your quilt because you are gonna quilt this to batting and backing and that will add a lot of extra security the quarter inch that's built into most sewing patterns or quilting patterns is as much about kind of security of your block as it is about helping your points line up so in this case since we're using the paper to help us line up all our points and all of our little block pieces we don't need to rely on that quarter inch seam allowance as much so this is a little short but it's fine we've trimmed our seam allowance so now it's time to press this number three piece out and again i have a bunch of this extra white fabric so you could take a large piece of fabric and kind of eyeball it and cut it to size before you line it up and sew it and do all of that but i like having that little added extra security of some extra fabric so i trim it off after play around and decide on kind of how that works best for you if you would prefer to have pieces of fabric that are a little closer to the pieces in your block then you can absolutely go ahead and kind of rough cut this down so if i was using this piece of fabric and we are ready for number four i might cut it just like that so that it's a little bit closer to the actual size of the number four so let's work on that so i fold at the number four line and line it up with my smaller piece of fabric and i can see from the shadow that the piece of fabric that i just cut kind of completely covers that number four so i'm gonna pick it up and move it to my sewing machine and sew on that line that connects one to four we're ready to trim so fold it back if you don't have one of these at a quarter rulers you can absolutely use a regular rotary cutter you're just gonna line it up with the quarter of an inch line on your ruler and trim off the excess works exactly the same now we can unfold our paper and unfold our fabric and press it open so we've done one two three and four now it's time for five we're going to repeat the process fold at the five line place your fabric right side up on your table because you want it to be right sides together with the other fabrics that are here the only one that gets placed right side down is the number one block always just the number one i'm gonna line up my number five area with my fabric make sure it extends all the way around and then i can fold it back sew on the line now we have all this junk to clean off so we're going to fold it back trim off the excess and this is why you need that trash can right by you and now we can press our fabric so now we have the center and our first round of triangles done and now we get to move on to the larger outer triangles which i'm going to do back at aqua so i think i'm going to use this little grunge dots so we're going to find the number six triangle fold it back you guys know the drill now my fabric is right side up and here you can really see the outline of that aqua fabric since it is really dark it extends up beyond my seam line and completely covers that triangle so i can fold my paper back and sew on the line fold that paper and we can trim off the extra and now we can press that fabric out foundation paper piecing is a lot like paint by numbers you just need to find the next number that you're working on and see what it attaches to that you have already sewn and sew that line between them you can see how lovely our little point looks right here so i'm gonna keep going and finish up the outer triangles and then we can talk about trimming okay we have finished sewing all the seams on our block and it kind of looks like a mess right um there's one more step that we need to take care of and that is trimming the whole block down if you flip your block back over you notice that outer kind of line that isn't connected to anything it's kind of like an echo of your block that is the line that we are going to use now to trim our blocks down so they're ready to sew together now through this we have only been using our rotary cutter to cut our fabric if you ever find yourself in a position where you are sewing and trimming and you're cutting through paper then take a break and think about what you're doing because you should only be cutting fabric up until this point other than when you cut your blocks apart from the paper printed pattern so now we're actually going to be using a rotary cutter to cut paper and i keep an old rotary blade around and kind of an extra handle that i use just for trimming foundation paper piece blocks because it does dull the blade pretty quickly when you're cutting paper so here's my trusty paper rotary cutter and i have little x's that go along the handle so i always know which one it is you don't have to have a square ruler to trim these down you can definitely use a regular ruler but this way i can just do two sides at once if you're using a creative grid's ruler then two of the edges have a frosted edge that measures a quarter of an inch and the other two have a frosted area that measures half an inch i'm gonna go ahead and use those two quarter inch edges and i'm just going to align the inner dashed line with my block that's printed and the outer portion of the ruler will follow that seam allowance line and then i cut through the paper and the extra fabric that's hanging over the side clear that away and now i can rotate the whole thing and do the same thing i can also use my three and a half inch line as a check to make sure i'm cutting in the right place and when we flip it over a perfect block foundation paper piecing is really great because you can use all these odd pieces of fabric and sew them together without cutting or measuring them and your block will turn out fantastic so it's been just a little while and i have made a few more blocks i wanted to share them with you and then talk about removing the papers so i spent a little bit of time and i made a six inch block this little two inch guy and then all these adorable little blocks i can't even stand it they're so cute um i'm still not sure which way i'm gonna go color wise i think i'm gonna go ahead and use up all of my aqua scraps and then make a decision if i want to add more colors or not but um i think that this is adorable the way it's going um a lot of the blocks i had enough of each print to do all four triangles but this one i ended up making scrappy and i think it's maybe even more adorable so um we'll see how the trajectory takes me so when you flip over the block you still have all of the paper attached and you can remove the paper now and just have a stack of blocks to sew together like you would a normally pieced quilt you would align the edges with the quarter inch seam allowance and sew them all together or you can keep the paper on and use this seam allowance line to help you align your blocks as you assemble them it's really just a matter of preference i often will remove all of the papers when they're in this state because it's just a little easier to remove the papers now but i really suggest that you try both ways try sewing it together with the paper on and see if you get more accurate results or you just enjoy the process better and then you can wait and remove the papers all at the end and have a little paper ripping party if you have kids you can bribe oftentimes kids will rip the papers out for you first they have been perforated by your needle and the thread and they've also been folded a couple times on those lines so i just find a line i'm going to rip along and you just rip and i just kind of work around it helps to do this on a flat surface so you can kind of hold the block down while you rip the paper off but it's as easy as that these little internal guys will sometimes just pop off sometimes you need to use like a fingernail or on really small blocks you might need to um get some tweezers to help you get the the block kind of going but that's it and now you have what looks like a totally normal traditionally pieced block all your seam allowances are about a quarter of an inch this one i actually just ended up cutting with my scissors since it was kind of an easier step than setting it down and aligning a ruler and the seams were so short so i just snipped them with my scissors so you can tell they're not exactly straight but they are fine they will be on the inside of your quilt and no one will ever see them again so that's it you can now sew this together or keep a stack of them and let your little stack of economy blocks grow as the year progresses that's all there is to foundation paper piecing it is a really simple way to assemble blocks that are really precise now this is a fairly simple foundation paper piece block and they can get quite complicated you can have anything from this very small little nine piece block all the way up to an entire quilt size foundation paper pieced um a large picture of a person or an animal or whatever you can think up but they all work exactly the same you're gonna have a picture of a block or a section of a quilt that is numbered and once you are done with all those numbers then you're either done with the block or you'll be attaching it to another section that is numbered so you'll do a1 through a12 and attach that to the b section that has all those numbers on it too and then you sew them together and that's it you can end up with a whole quilt all foundation paper pieced and there won't be any fabric measuring involved so in the comments i would love to hear about your long-term projects like this do you have an ongoing scrap project that you work on or um is this totally not your cup of tea and do you want to make all the blocks at once i will be back with another cool tutorial very soon in the meantime there are videos popping up on the screen and i hope you guys have a lovely day happy quilting because i could like rotate this a little bit

Channel: Tiny Orchard Quilts

Views: 88,777

Keywords: quilting, quilt how to, quilt, tiny orchard quilts, quilting tutorial, how to make a quilt, Foundation paper piecing for begginers, foundation paper piecing for beginners, foundation paper piecing, economy block foundation paper, crumb quilt blocks, scrap quilt block ideas, scrap quilt patterns for beginners, crumb quilt tutorial, scrap quilt, small scrap quilt patterns, quilt patterns, quilt patterns free, free quilt patterns, free quilt patterns using scraps

Id: SgLSaMw0T_k

Length: 29min 50sec (1790 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 09 2021