Foundation Paper Piecing 5" Heart Block Projects

Published January 2026

Spread the love with our Foundation Paper Piecing 5" Heart Block papers! The pad contains 50 sheets of uncoated foundation paper, printed with a template for one FPP Heart Block that finishes to 5" x 5". Great for all sorts of projects and heartwarming gifts, these sheets make piecing perfect hearts easy and fun.

Click the Free Download for fun project ideas and shop our vast selection of fabrics to get started making these charming hearts!

In this video, you'll learn:

• The Add-a-Quarter ruler’s two edges — tapered and lip — and what each one does in every single seam.
• The trim, sew, press (TSP) cycle that repeats, piece by piece, through the whole block.
• How to use a light pad to confirm a fabric piece covers its space plus a full quarter inch before you commit to gluing or sewing it down.
• Why the very first piece of each section gets glued in place while every piece after it gets sewn.
• Why you leave the paper attached until the block’s two halves are joined — and what that paper is quietly doing for your accuracy.

Introduction

This heart block was designed right here at Shabby Fabrics as the centerpiece of a Valentine’s Day table runner — and rather than intricate patchwork made of many small pieces, the heart shape itself comes together through foundation paper piecing. Foundation paper piecing has a reputation for being confusing the first time you try it, so this tutorial steps through the entire process from the very beginning. Whether you’ve paper pieced dozens of blocks or never touched it before, you can follow along and be successful.

Your kit includes a practice sheet. The kit comes with nine sheets of the heart foundation paper even though the pattern only calls for eight blocks — that ninth sheet is a freebie meant for practice. If foundation paper piecing is new to you, work through that one first with scrap fabric before moving on to your eight “real” hearts.

What You’ll Need: The Add-a-Quarter Toolkit

Foundation paper piecing works on any regular sewing machine, but a small set of specialty tools makes the whole process dramatically easier. Gather these before you start:

• An Add-a-Quarter ruler (sold as a set of two, in yellow or pink) — it has a tapered edge for folding the paper back precisely on a seam line, and a straight lip edge that locks against that folded edge to guide your rotary cutter exactly a quarter inch out. You’ll use both edges on every single seam.
• A fabric glue stick, for tacking the very first piece of each section in place before any sewing happens.
• Tweezers (optional) — handy later for lifting stubborn bits of paper out of tight corners when it’s time to remove the foundation paper.
• A fine, sharp needle. A size 70 needle pierces the paper cleanly, which matters since you’ll be sewing through it repeatedly.
• A light pad or light box. Holding your work up to a sunny window works in a pinch, but a light pad set flat on your table makes it far easier to check that a fabric piece covers its space with an even margin all the way around.

Shorten your stitch length before you begin. Set your machine’s stitch length to about 1.5 and leave it there for the entire block — every seam within a section and the seam that joins the two sections. Sewing on paper always calls for a shortened stitch: it perforates the paper so it releases cleanly later, and it adds enough strength and stability that removing the paper afterward won’t unseat the stitches you just sewed.

Understanding Your Foundation Papers

Take a look at one heart foundation paper before you cut anything. It’s printed in two separate pieces — an upper portion and a lower portion — which you’ll piece independently and join together at the very end. That’s a common structure in foundation paper piecing generally, not unique to this heart: whenever a block is split into sections, you build each section on its own and join them later.

1. Separate the upper and lower papers from each other. That’s the only prep step before you start cutting fabric.
2. If you’d like, trim away some of the excess paper around the outer edge of each portion — but leave the outermost drawn line alone for now. That line is your trim-up line, and you’ll cut precisely on it only after the whole section is pieced.

Also open up your pattern’s full-color cutting diagram before you begin. Shabby Fabrics patterns print these in full color specifically because foundation paper piecing can involve the same fabric cut into several different shapes and sizes — the color diagram is what tells you exactly which fabric belongs in which numbered space.

No one learns this from a book alone. Foundation paper piecing genuinely isn’t something most people can read about and figure out on their own — it takes seeing it, and often seeing it more than once. If the steps below feel confusing on the first pass, that’s completely normal. Watch the rhythm repeat a few times and it clicks.

Cutting and Labeling Your Fabric

Your pattern’s cutting chart lists a size to cut from each fabric — for example, a 3″ x 4½″ rectangle from each of the seven reds in this kit. Cutting accurately is only half the job; keeping track of which piece is which matters just as much.

1. Cut each fabric to the size your pattern lists, then immediately label it with the included sticker (your kit comes with a full sheet, already keyed to the pattern — you can also make your own from a sheet of dollar-store stickers for future projects).
2. Use the full-color cutting diagram to confirm which fabric goes with which sticker as you go — it’s very easy to lose track once several similar reds are cut into the same size pieces.
3. Sort your labeled pieces into number order — A1, A2, A3, and so on for the upper portion, B1, B2, B3 for the lower — and keep the two groups separate until you’re ready to sew each section.

Skip the stickers at your own risk. Even a simple block generates a surprising number of same-color cuts that look nearly identical once they’re separated from the diagram. Without labels, it’s easy to end up using the wrong fabric in the wrong spot — and not noticing until the section is already sewn.

The Trim, Sew, Press Rhythm

This is the core technique you’ll repeat, piece by piece, until an entire section is filled. The process that follows applies whether a section has one piece or twenty — same rhythm every time.

Placing and Gluing the First Piece

1. Working on the back side of the foundation paper, hold piece A1’s fabric pretty side up over its space and check it against a light source — a light pad makes this easiest.
2. Adjust the fabric until you can see it covers the full space of A1 and at least a quarter inch of margin all the way around it.
3. Once you’re happy with the placement, add a small dot of glue underneath and press it into position without shifting it.

The very first piece of each section is glued — the rest are sewn. You’ll need something already attached to the paper before you can start sewing pieces to each other, so piece A1 (and, later, B1) gets glued down first. Every piece after that is added by sewing, not gluing.

The Trim, Sew, Press Cycle

With your first piece glued in place, here’s the cycle you’ll repeat for every piece that follows, working outward to whichever numbered piece is next — A1 to A2, then A2 to A3, then A3 to A4, and so on:

1. Fold: Lay the Add-a-Quarter ruler’s tapered edge along the printed line between the current piece and the next one, then fold the paper back over the ruler’s edge. If a previous seam is in the way of a clean fold, it’s fine to rip the paper back slightly along that line — you’ll be removing this paper eventually anyway.
2. Trim: Turn the ruler around to its straight lip edge and lock it against the folded paper. Trim the fabric underneath with your rotary cutter, right along the ruler’s edge — this leaves a scant quarter inch of fabric extending past the fold.
3. Place and check: Lay the next numbered piece right sides together over that trimmed edge, then flip it open and check its coverage on the light pad. It needs to cover its full space plus a quarter inch of margin all around, just like the first piece did — nudge it as needed. Small shifts make a bigger difference than they look like they will, so adjust in small moves rather than large ones.
4. Pin: Once you’re happy with the placement, pin it out of the way of the line you’re about to sew on.
5. Sew: At your shortened stitch length, sew directly on the marked line, starting a stitch or two before the line begins and continuing a stitch or two past where it ends — don’t stop short.
6. Press: Press the new piece open. A small pressing tool like a Clover mini iron or roller works well here if you’d rather not walk back and forth to a full-size iron for every single piece.

Small changes make big corrections. When you’re fine-tuning a piece’s position on the light pad, a shift that feels tiny is often more than enough — and overcorrecting is just as easy as undercorrecting. Nudge, check, and nudge again rather than making one large adjustment.

Trimming and Pressing the Finished Section

Once every numbered piece in a section is sewn on, give the whole thing a final good press, then trim it to size:

1. Trim as accurately as you can right on the outermost drawn line — the trim-up line you left alone back at the start. Anything outside that line was never meant to be part of the finished section, so it’s fine to have left the paper untrimmed out there the whole time.
2. Notice that the distance between your last seam line and that outer trim line is exactly a quarter inch. That’s not a coincidence — it’s the seam allowance you’ll use to join this section to the other one.

Piece the lower B section the same way — glue B1 in place first, then work outward through the trim, sew, press cycle exactly as you did for section A, and trim it on its outer line when it’s complete.

Don’t sew straight across the section where the two halves will join. It’s tempting to sew a piece straight through to the far edge in one pass, but when there’s another whole section waiting on the other side of a line, stop your stitching just past that line rather than sewing all the way through. Save that final long seam for when you actually join the two sections together.

Joining the Upper and Lower Sections

With both sections trimmed, resist the urge to remove the paper just yet — leaving it on is doing real work for you right now.

The paper is what tells you, unambiguously, which edge of section A joins to section B (it’s easy to get a trimmed section turned around and joined the wrong way once the paper is gone). More importantly, the printed line on the paper is your seam line for this join — it lets you match the two sections up and sew an accurate quarter inch without needing to fuss over lining up raw fabric edges by eye.

1. Stack the two trimmed sections right sides together, matching their edges as precisely as you can.
2. Keep your machine at the same shortened stitch length — you’re still sewing through paper for this seam.
3. Sew directly on the marked line, from edge to edge.
4. Press the seam open to distribute the bulk of all those layered seams evenly.

That printed line is your accuracy insurance. This is exactly why the instructions say to leave the paper attached until the two sections are joined — once it’s removed, you lose the one guide that makes this last seam foolproof.

Removing the Paper

Once the joining seam is pressed open, it’s safe to start removing the paper — genuinely one of the most satisfying parts of foundation paper piecing. Work it away gently along each perforated seam line, and reach for tweezers for any small bits caught in tight corners.

If you still have other sections or blocks to sew onto this one, it’s also fine to leave the paper in place a little longer — it continues giving you a reliable quarter inch seam allowance for whatever comes next. There’s no rush to remove it the moment the seam is pressed; take it out whenever it suits your workflow.

Finishing the Table Runner

Once your heart blocks are pieced, the rest of the table runner is easy, straightforward square piecing — simply follow your pattern’s instructions for assembling, layering, and finishing with the binding and backing included in your kit.

Foundation paper piecing genuinely isn’t intuitive the first time through, but the trim, sew, press rhythm becomes almost soothing once it clicks — and it makes shapes, like this heart’s crisp inner points, that traditional patchwork simply can’t achieve.

Pick up one of our limited foundation paper piecing heart block kits while supplies last — each one includes your eight pattern pages plus one extra for practice, along with the notions you’ll need to get started.