Saturday, March 8, 2014

Quilt Shot Block #21~ Hole Y Scrap ~ Difference in Paper & Foundation Piecing

12 in Block
According to Wikipedia, the Spanish edit: "Appearing alone as a word, the letter Y is a grammatical conjunction with the meaning "and" in Spanish and is pronounced /i/." [/ee/ in English].

     Yesterday I spent some time watching Paper Piecing Quilting on You-Tube.  I noticed several Quilters used the terms "paper piecing" and "foundation quilting" as synonymous terms. I beg to differ.  In my experience all paper piecing is a form of foundation quilting but not all foundation quilting is paper pieced. Paper piecing uses a drawn set of lines to follow, and foundation piecing uses a form to follow either paper or cloth.  I made this square following a shape with no set lines to sew.  You let the scrap piece speak to you. My ancestors made String Quilts by using squares of newspaper as the foundation  to add a variety of widths of strips of fabric.
In this case I used some leftover tear away stabilizer from an embroidery project.
I cut eight 3½ inch squares.

Grabbed some scraps out of my "small scrap" basket.

Laid the pieces on the foundation stitching fabric edges instead of lines to cover the foundation.
Sometimes fabric edges aren't always straight.  You could cut them before you stitch or cut them after you stitch.
As in paper piecing, you use the foundation piece to cut away fabric you don't need.
It's always a surprise to see how they turn out.
     After cutting according to foundation, if you can, tear away!  For this heavy tear away stabilizer, I realized I should have used shorter stitches to perforate the stabilizer more for easier tearing.  First I folded the stabilizer along the stitch line, then tore it away. Paper is much easier to handle.  
     Fabric is used as foundation when needed to add more structure and would not be taken off as done usually in clothes making, i.e. blocking.
     I cut out eight white 2 ½ inch squares.  Yes, you could have used rectangles.  I tried to search for the name of this pattern when using the rectangles and 4½ square in the center. Do you know the name? I decided on the smaller squares to use smaller pieces of scraps.
     If you look super close, you can see I didn't match the very center, but with the various scraps, it doesn't matter.  I think the interest comes when seams accidentally come together or look like they come together.  Can you find some?
     So when I looked at this block, I saw a "hole" in the center and it was made of scraps, thus "Hole and Scraps," or as the Spanish language would say, "Hole Y Scraps!"
        Hope you enJOY foundation piecing!


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possibly used for this post
GIMP for cropping & other digital effects
 Photoscape for downsizing & watermarking photo
PicMonkey creating collages used on this page

11 comments:

  1. Wow, so much I did not know about quilting! The scraps look beautiful put together like this. There is a term in card making called Paper Piecing also. You stamp an image on to several pieces of paper and cut them out and put them together. Pretty close to what you do here. ~Diane

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  2. Oh My Heavens...you have done sew much work to show us. Thank you sew very much. Creative Blissful Stitching...

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  3. Thank you for this very clear tutorial, and you gotta love not matching seams :) Every time I see this I think "I HAVE to try it" . . .I have also seen where people use dryer sheets that have been 'used.' Have you ever done this? I have quite a collection of dryer sheets but hesitate because I just can't figure out how that dryer sheet is going to 'behave' over the life of the quilt. . .

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    1. Yes I have used dryer sheets. On my list to do tut about that and another something I use for foundations.

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  4. since I'm not a quilter, only wish I was, I didn't know the difference between the two. I think I could actually do this :) Thanks for all the info and I like your Hole Y Scraps block

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  5. Thank you for the clear explanation on your view! I hear you!
    I adore the name Holy Y Scraps!
    Esther
    esthersipatchandquilt at yahoo dot com
    ipatchandquilt dot wordpress dot com

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  6. Thanks for clarifying the difference in the two techniques. I think I like the idea of foundation piecing and will try it out. It seems so much more free form which is my style of quilting.

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  7. Very cute little block. I like the idea to use those tiny scraps. Thanks for sharing the info.

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  8. I have so much yet to learn about quilting. Thanks for furthering my knowledge, Joy!

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  9. I never gave a lot of thought to the difference, but now that you point it out, I certainly can see that there is one. your block is lovely! I love scrappy sewing!

    Thanks for linking to Needle and Thread Thursday!

    :) Kelly @ My Quilt Infatuation

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  10. I use fabric foundations for my string blocks. Then I don't have to tear it away. Thanks for sharing this with Oh Scrap!

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