Foundation Paper Piecing Series 4 - August

Published August 2026

Learn how to master Foundation Paper Piecing with Jen in this step-by-step tutorial! If you've ever struggled with with Foundation Paper Piecing, or are new to the technique, Jen shares her simple, effective method to create the blocks in the Series 4 project for August which features an adorable bumblebee with sparkling wings.

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Introduction

August is full on bee season, and this month we are celebrating the little critters that do such an important job. We had a lot of fun with the fabrics on this one, working some magic into the wings with fairy frost and glitter fabric.

Foundation paper piecing gives you precision that is hard to reach any other way. It is not intuitive at the start, with paper on one side and fabric on the other, but once you catch the rhythm you will be on your way. Today covers every step from the beginning, so this works whether you have done a dozen of these or none at all.

Your kit includes those same exact fabrics, the glitter for the wings, the outer border, binding, backing, a little extra for a hanging sleeve, your foundation papers, stickers, and a full color tested pattern.

The block is shown here on a Paisley & Polka Dot display. Earlier projects in this series have been displayed on the Ackfeld table display and on a French curl, and any of them work beautifully. If you would rather hang your finished block on a wall, that is a lovely option too.

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What You'll Need

From your kit

• Full color tested pattern with foundation papers
• Fabrics for the block, wings, border, binding, backing, and hanging sleeve
• Numbered stickers for labeling your cuts

From your sewing room

• Add-a-Quarter Plus ruler. The set with both the 6" and the 12" is our recommendation. The 6" handles a project this size nicely, and the 12" is what you will want for longer angles. Available in yellow or pink.
• Sewline glue pen. It dries clear and it is water soluble.
• Light pad or light box. Jen is using the Wafer 1.
• Creative Grids ruler with grip, for trimming your sections
  
• Clover extra fine patchwork pins. The fine gauge enters the paper without disturbing your position.
• Rotary cutter with a sharp blade, and small scissors
• Iron, or a Clover Roll-N-Press
• Clapper, useful when a seam would rather not stay open
• Gypsy Quilter tweezers for removing paper from tight corners
• Sizing
• Callie Del fusible fleece
• Coordinating thread set

This is a remarkably small kit for what it can do. Once you have your ruler, a glue pen, a light source, and the right needle, you are equipped for foundation paper piecing of almost any scale. There are very few notions involved, which is part of what makes it such a satisfying thing to do.

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Getting Organized

Establishing these practices up front is what lets you do this consistently every single time.

Size and press

Get your fabrics out of the kit, add plenty of sizing, and iron everything good and flat.

The full color pattern earns its place right here. When you have three yellows and a couple of teals in front of you, a picture tells you instantly which is which.

Cut and sticker as you go

Work down the cutting instructions one line at a time, making the cut and then applying the matching sticker before moving on.

The first cut here is yellow one at 2" x 3.5", which becomes A1, and A1 is the first sticker on the sheet. The stickers are sequenced to match the cutting order exactly, so they stay in step with you the whole way down.

If the numbers seem to skip, that is expected. The second cut might be A3 rather than A2. The stickers follow the cutting sequence rather than the piecing sequence, so just take them in the order they come and everything will line up.

Group by section

Every sticker begins with A, B, C, or D, because this block is built from four sections that come together at the end. It is the same idea as sewing a top row, a middle row, and a bottom row, then joining them.

Put each section in numerical order. A runs from 1 to 9, B runs from 1 to 5, and so on through C and D.

Roughly cut your foundation papers apart and keep each one with its own stack of fabric. Do not cut on the outermost line yet. That is a trim line for later, so cut outside it for now.

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Setting Up Your Machine

Shorten your stitch length to 1.5. A Bernina defaults to around 2.5, so this is significantly shorter. It puts more thread into a given distance for strength, and it perforates the paper so it comes away easily later.

If you're not already using one, switch to a sharp size 70 needle. Patchwork is usually done with an 80, so this is a finer needle. That fineness helps you hit exactly on the line, and its sharpness perforates the paper cleanly.

Needle sizing runs opposite to thread sizing. With needles, a smaller number means a finer needle. With thread, it is the other way around. Nobody seems to know who decided that, but it is worth keeping straight when you are picking up a pack!

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Placing the First Piece

The first piece of every section is handled differently from all the others. A1, B1, C1, and D1 each get glued to the paper.

Write this one down: the back of the fabric goes to the back of the paper. It is the detail that slips away when you have been off foundation paper piecing for a while, and having it written down saves you reorienting yourself every time you come back to it.

1. Hold your first piece wrong side against the back of the paper.
2. Turn on your light source and look from the front. The fabric needs to cover the whole shape plus at least .25" beyond the printed lines all the way around.
3. There is no measuring involved. It is a visual estimation, and the light makes it obvious.
4. Once you are happy, apply a little glue and press the fabric down.

Choose a glue that dries clear, and keep it away from liquid glues. A water soluble fabric glue pen is the right tool here. A craft glue can leave a tint that shows through a light fabric even after the paper comes off, and a liquid glue makes too much contact with the paper, so scraps of it stay stuck to your fabric when you go to remove it later.

Repeat for the first piece of each remaining section.

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The Trim, Sew, Press Rhythm

Everything from here is three moves repeated. Trim, Sew, Press. Think of it like a teaspoon in a recipe, TSP, and you will not forget the order.

Trim

1. Look at the line between the piece you are on and the piece you are adding. If you are at D1, your neighbor is D2, and the line between them is your fold.
2. Lay the tapered edge of the Add-a-Quarter ever so slightly to the left of that line and fold the paper back over it.
3. Check that the fold landed right on the line. If it did, give it a nice firm crease and look once more.
4. Turn the ruler around so the lip locks into the fold. Slide it up and down to confirm it is seated.
5. Trim.

Try flipping the ruler over. The Add-a-Quarter has a slight ramp to it, so turning it upside down puts it flatter against your work. It sits more solidly and takes less holding steady, which makes folding the paper back noticeably easier.

If you need to tear the paper a little to fold it back where you have already stitched, that is fine. The paper is not staying.

Check your placement before you sew

Your next piece does not need to be the same length as the one already down. This is not patchwork, where pieces match edge to edge. You are attaching one piece to the next, and the only thing that matters is coverage.

1. Set the next piece right sides together against your trimmed edge.
2. Flip it over as though you had already sewn the seam and hold it to your light source.
3. Confirm it covers its shape with .25" to spare all around. Adjust and look again if it does not.
4. Pin so nothing moves.

Check every time, even when you are sure. Instinct will tell you a piece goes one way when the angle actually calls for the other, and the light source settles it in a few seconds. That is a far better trade than unpicking a seam sewn at a 1.5 stitch length.

Sew

Start a few stitches before the line, sew directly on the line, and stop a stitch or two after it. Crossing your tracks at both ends is what locks the seam in.

Where a line runs to the edge of the piece, you can simply sew straight off rather than stopping.

There is no backstitching in foundation paper piecing. Starting before the line and finishing after it does the same job, and it does it without building up bulk at the ends of your seams.

Press

Press the new piece open, exactly as you would with regular patchwork.

An iron is the obvious choice, and a Clover Roll-N-Press is an excellent alternative. It is ideal at a retreat where several makers are sharing one iron, and it saves getting up when the iron is across the room.

A Roll-N-Press is also the safer option with little ones around. Once your cutting is done you can put the rotary cutter away and the iron away, and carry on sewing with no hot cord within reach. Worth considering if children or grandchildren are nearby while you work.

Then repeat

D1 to D2 is done, so D2 to D3 is next. Trim, sew, press. That is the rhythm.

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Finding Where to Go Next

The first few are obvious, because the pieces sit side by side. Then you reach a point where the next number is not touching the piece you just added, and it is less clear where to fold.

Find the wall between where you are going and where you have already been. If your next piece is D4, look for the line it shares with a section you have already covered. That shared line is your fold, every time. D5 and D6 come later, so they are not candidates yet.

Once you have identified that line, the convention is unchanged. Fold to the left of it, turn the ruler, flip the lip in, trim, check your placement, pin, sew, press.

Keep going until every piece of that section is on the back of the paper.

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Trimming Your Sections

At this point the section looks chaotic around the edges. This next step is where all that precision arrives, and it is one of the most satisfying parts of the whole process.

1. Find the outermost printed line on your foundation.
2. Lay a Creative Grids ruler with grip along that line. The Add-a-Quarter can do this job flipped over, though a gripped ruler holds far more securely.
3. Trim, then rotate and work around all four sides.

Watch for the dashed line to disappear. Line the dashed line on your ruler up over the darker solid line on the foundation. When the dash becomes one with the solid line and seems to vanish, you are in exactly the right spot.

Cut exactly on the line at every little jog and nook. Those small shapes are engineered deliberately, and cutting them precisely is what makes the four sections fall into place when you join them.

Leave your papers on. It is tempting to start peeling, but the papers have more work to do. The distance from your trimmed edge to the printed solid line is exactly .25", which means your seam allowance is already marked for you and you will not need a seam guide at the machine.

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Joining the Sections

Your pattern gives the order the sections come together. Here that is A to B, then the AB unit to C, then the ABC unit to D.

The papers are a roadmap as well as a stabilizer. Each edge is labeled with the unit it joins, so the paper itself tells you which side goes where.

1. Remove the paper inside the seam allowance so that seam lies nice and flat. Everything else stays.
2. Stack the two units carefully and pin well.
3. Pin on the inside, away from where you will stitch, so you never have to stop and pull a pin out mid seam.
4. Pin each end first, then fill in everything between.
5. Sew on the line, still at a 1.5 stitch length.

Keep the stitch length short for as long as the paper is on. Any seam that passes through paper wants that 1.5. You can go back to your usual length later, once the papers are out and you are working with fabric alone.

Extra fine patchwork pins are worth reaching for here. The fine gauge slips through fabric and paper without disturbing the position of anything, which is exactly what you want when the angles have to land. If you are ever working with much thicker fabric, go up a gauge instead.

Pressing the joins

Your pattern marks the pressing direction for every join. A double arrow means press that seam open.

Warm the seam and press the direction the instructions indicate. If a seam that should be open would rather close itself up, a clapper will settle it. Press the seam, remove the paper there, press again, then set the clapper on top and let its weight hold everything flat while it cools.

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Borders, Then Paper Removal

The papers stay on for one more step.

Add your borders before you remove the paper. The printed .25" line is still right there, so you sew on a line rather than tracking a seam allowance across a long strip. Take the paper off first and you have given that advantage away.

1. Place your left and right borders, pin each end and then between, and sew on the line. Press to the outside.
2. Do the same with the top and bottom borders. Press to the outside.

Now the papers come off. For the corners and tight spots where fingers will not reach, a pair of fine tweezers makes short work of it.

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Layering, Quilting, and Finishing

1. Fuse Callie Del fusible fleece to the back of the top and add your backing fabric to make your quilt sandwich.
2. Quilt with your thread set through all the layers.
3. Trim away any excess fusible fleece or batting and backing.
4. Bind, and add a hanging sleeve if you plan to display it.

On the quilting, we are not stitching in the ditch. Committing to letting the thread show gives the whole block a lovely embossed look, and it emphasizes all those angles you just built.

Need the hanging sleeve or the binding? Both are walked through step by step in the earlier videos in this series.

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If you enjoyed this project be sure to explore our extensive lineup of curated Foundation Paper Piecing kits available in wide array of themes!