Foundation Paper Piecing Series 4 - September

Published August 2026

Join Jen for the September block in Foundation Paper Piecing Series 4, a bright apple pieced in Riley Blake and Lori Holt fabrics. This tutorial is a full refresher on the Trim, Sew, Press rhythm, covering how to set up your machine, how to place every piece with confidence, and how to trim and join your sections for the precision that makes foundation paper piecing so satisfying.

In this video, you'll learn:

• How to get organized before you sew, using the stickers included in your kit.
• How to place the first piece of a section with a glue pen and a light source.
• The Trim, Sew, Press rhythm, using the Add-A-Quarter Plus ruler.
• How to check every placement before sewing, so you never have to seam rip.
• How to trim your sections, join them, and add borders while the paper is still on.

Check the links for everything you need.

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Introduction

September is apple picking season, so this month brings an apple in glorious color. Between our home in Idaho and our neighbors in Washington there are more varieties than you can count, and picking them is one of our favorite family things to do in the fall. Hay ride included!

Foundation paper piecing lets you achieve angles and precision you simply can't get any other way, and more and more quilters are catching the bug. It's a bit of a mind bender at first, with paper on one side and fabric on the other. Once the rhythm clicks, though, it's genuinely fun, and the precision of it is deeply satisfying.

"If foundation paper piecing hasn't gone well for you before, you're in good company. I couldn't catch the rhythm of it either. My fabric kept coming out too short and I set it aside for decades. Then I watched someone at a quilt retreat working on a Judy Niemeyer and simply asked how she was doing it. Everything has been different since, and passing that along is exactly what today is about." ~ Jen

Your kit includes the fabrics for the front and the back, enough for the hanging sleeve, your binding, and a full color tested pattern. Those are the exact fabrics you see in the sample, not a likeness.

Every pattern is proofed before it reaches you. We write a preliminary pattern, grab our fabric, and our makers build this exact project, making edits as they go. By the time the pattern is in your kit, a professional maker has been all the way through it.

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What You'll Need

From your kit

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

From your sewing room

• Add-A-Quarter Plus ruler. The two-pack with both the 6" and the 12" is our recommendation, since larger projects run out of room on the 6" quickly. Available in yellow or pink.
• Sewline fabric glue pen. Water soluble and it dries clear.
• Light pad or light box
• Creative Grids 2.5" x 12.5" ruler for trimming. A bite-sized ruler is much easier to handle here than a big one.
• Sharp size 70 needles
• Rotary cutter with a sharp blade
• Patchwork pins
• Seam ripper, just in case
• Iron, or a Clover Roll and Press
• Gypsy Quilter tweezers for removing paper from tight corners
• Cali Del fusible fleece
• Coordinating thread set

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Getting Organized

Getting organized is one of the most important parts of foundation paper piecing, which is why the stickers come in your kit.

Step 1 – Size and press everything

There's a lot of bias involved in foundation paper piecing. Give all your fabrics plenty of sizing and a good firm press before you cut. It stabilizes everything and makes your presses crisper. Any brand you like will do. We aren't wedded to one.

Step 2 – Cut and sticker as you go

Work down the cutting list one line at a time. Make the cut, then put the matching sticker on that piece before you move on.

Each cut in the pattern lists the size along with the position it fills on the foundation paper. Your first cut here is a 6" x 4" from the background fabric, and it goes in position C9. That position label may not mean much to you yet, and it doesn't need to. Cut the size listed, sticker it with the label, and carry on until there are no stickers left on the sheet.

Step 3 – Group your pieces by section

Every sticker starts with A, B, or C. That's because this apple is built from three sections that come together at the end, much like the top, middle, and bottom rows of any quilt block.

Gather each section's pieces and put them in numerical order: A1, A2, A3 and so on, up to the highest number. Section C runs all the way to C9. Section B, in this block, is a single piece.

Step 4 – Separate your foundations

Roughly cut your foundation papers apart so you can work on one section at a time. Set A and B aside and keep C in front of you.

Don't cut on the outermost printed line yet. That line is for later, when we trim everything up. That trimming step is one of the most satisfying parts of the whole process!

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Setting Up Your Machine

These simple adjustments will set you up for success!

Shorten your stitch length to 1.5. Most machines default to around 2.5 millimeters. Bringing it down to 1.5 does two jobs at once. It perforates the paper so it releases cleanly later, and it packs more thread into the seam so nothing shifts when you pull that paper away. A long stitch behaves like a basting stitch and comes right out. A short one locks things in.

Put in a Microtex sharp needle, size 70. It's finer than what you'd normally use for patchwork, and that's exactly the point. You want it to pierce the printed line precisely and perforate the paper cleanly.

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Placing the First Piece

The first piece of every section gets treated differently. A1, B1, C1, and so on, however many sections your project has. This one gets glued down.

1. Take your C1 fabric and hold it wrong side to the back of the paper. The printed letters and numbers are on the front, and your fabric goes on the back.
2. Turn on your light pad and look at the front. Your fabric needs to cover the C1 shape completely, with at least .25" beyond the printed lines all the way around.
3. Once you've found a position with that margin on every side, put a little glue on the paper and set the fabric down.

That's the only time you'll need the glue pen for this section. Get it out again when you start section B.

"Use a glue made for fabric. A water soluble fabric glue pen dries clear, which is what you want. I once reached for a purple craft glue stick on the back of a white fabric, and to this day I can still see a hint of it back there!"

For a section with only one piece, like section B here, the job is even simpler. Glue the fabric to the back, then take it to your cutting mat and cut on the outermost line. That section is finished.

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The Trim, Sew, Press Rhythm

Everything from here is the same three moves, repeated. Trim, sew, press. You'll work the line between 1 and 2, then the line between 2 and 3, then 3 and 4, all the way up to 9.

The tool that makes this work is the Add-A-Quarter Plus, designed specifically for foundation paper piecing. One side is tapered and the other has a ledge, and you use both.

Trim

1. Turn the paper so the line you're working on sits comfortably in front of you.
2. Lay the tapered side of the ruler just to the left of that line and fold the paper back over it.
3. Look at what you've got. If the fold didn't land on the line, unfold and do it again. It takes two seconds and it's worth every one of them.
4. Flip the ruler over and bring the ledge against the folded edge. It clicks into place and locks, and you can slide it up and down freely.
5. Trim along the ruler.

If you need to tear the paper slightly to fold it back cleanly, that's fine. The paper isn't staying.

Check your placement

This is the step that makes the whole thing work, and it's worth doing every single time.

1. Set your next piece down right sides together against the trimmed edge, wherever you think it should go.
2. Take it to your light source, flip it as though you'd already sewn the seam, and look.
3. Does it cover its shape completely with .25" beyond the lines all the way around? If not, adjust and check again.

Checking beats seam ripping every time. If you sew first and discover the piece falls short, the seam ripper is the only way back, and at a 1.5 stitch length that is slow going. You may tear the paper too, and then you're taping the foundation back together before you can carry on. We still get fooled by an odd angle and assume a piece goes one way when it goes the other. A ten second look at the light pad can save you a lot of trouble down the road. 

Sew

1. Hold the piece in position and pin it, keeping the pin clear of where you'll stitch.
2. Flip to the printed side. You always sew from the side where you can see the line.
3. Stitch directly on the line.

You have two options for where to begin and end, and they work equally well. Either start just before the line and sew straight off the end, or start right off the edge and stop just after the line. What matters is that you pick one and cover the full length of the line.

Press

Just like regular patchwork, once two pieces are sewn right sides together, press the new piece open.

An iron is the natural choice. A Clover Roll and Press is a great second option and does a fantastic job. It's ideal at a retreat where four makers are sharing one iron and nobody wants to wait in line, and it's a good answer at home too if you'd rather not have an iron cord within reach of little hands.

That's one full round of Trim, Sew, Press. Now do the line between 2 and 3, and keep going. That's the rhythm.

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Trimming the Section

When your last piece is on, the section looks a bit wild around the edges. Trust the process. This is where it all comes together.

1. Find the outermost light printed line on your foundation.
2. Lay your ruler exactly on that line and press down. The grip on a Creative Grids ruler holds everything still.
3. Trim, then spin the project rather than picking it up, and trim the next side.

You'll notice small jogs at some corners. Trim straight across and then come back and pick up the jog at the end. Those are engineered corners, designed that way so the sections click together.

Leave the paper on! It's tempting to start peeling right now. The paper has more work to do, so it stays put for a while yet.

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Joining the Sections

Look at your trimmed section and find the solid line just inside the edge. That's your .25" seam allowance, and it's about to do the work for you.

1. Remove the paper within the seam allowance only, to reduce bulk in the seam. Everything else stays.
2. Check your pattern for the pressing direction. The arrows tell you which way each join goes, such as A to B.
3. Stack the two sections exactly top to bottom. Pin at the beginning, pin at the end, then pin everything in between, so the piece underneath can't scoot out of position where you can't see it.
4. Sew straight off, exactly on the line, and straight off the other end.
5. Press in the direction your pattern indicates.

When those sections fit together, you'll see exactly why people love this technique. The angles land perfectly.

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Borders, Then Paper Removal

Here's a step worth knowing: leave the paper on while you add your borders.

The printed .25" line is still right there on the paper. Put the border strip down, sew from the paper side, and you're simply following a line instead of hunting for an accurate quarter inch. Do your side borders first, then your top and bottom.

Once all four borders are on, now you get to take the paper off.

For the nooks and crannies down in the corners, where fingers just won't reach, a pair of fine-point tweezers makes short work of it. The Gypsy Quilter tweezers are one of the notions we find ourselves sold out of most often, and they're just as useful for beading or any other job that needs a precise point.

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Layering, Quilting, and Finishing

1. Fuse your Cali Del fusible fleece to the back of the top.
2. Add your backing, securing the layers with basting spray or basting glue.
3. Quilt through all three layers with your thread set.
4. Trim away the excess fusible fleece and backing.
5. Bind, and add your hanging sleeve if you'll be displaying it.

On the quilting: rather than stitching in the ditch between the green and the cream, stitch just inside the shape so the thread sits where you can see it. It gives the whole piece a beautiful embossed look. So much of patchwork is done in gray, white, or black, and it's a real pleasure to put a color in there and let it show.

Want a walkthrough of the hanging sleeve? That's covered step by step in the very first video of this series.

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Foundation paper piecing gives you a precision that's hard to get any other way, and the rhythm really is learnable. Even after four years I'm still catching my own assumptions, especially on a piece with an unusual angle. Check before you sew, and let the rhythm carry you.

Be sure to pick up your kit, the Add-A-Quarter ruler set in yellow or pink, your Cali Del Fusible Fleece, coordinating thread set, and any other notions you need!