Foundation paper piecing has one instruction that sounds wrong the first time you hear it, and Monica Poole gives it before anything else: the back of the printed paper is the right side of the block. Everything after that follows from it.
She teaches the technique inside a quilt as you go course, which is what makes this introduction different from most. Pattern Poole TV is the studio she runs with her daughter Alaura, and this block is part seven of a mystery quilt in which every block is quilted before any of them are joined.
The setup is specific enough to copy off the screen. Ordinary printer paper, the lighter the better because it tears away more easily, and hers is 70 gsm. A size 70 needle and a stitch length of 1.8, shorter than patchwork normally uses, for the same reason. An open toe foot, so the printed lines stay in sight. A dry iron with no steam, because steam softens the paper and lets it distort. And a cutting mat and a pressing mat beside the machine, so trimming, stitching and pressing happen without standing up between pieces.
The tutorial went up in 2024 and has passed thirteen thousand views.
Two things make it worth the thirteen minutes even if you have paper pieced before. The first is the tracing wheel. She rolls over every printed line before a stitch is sewn, which perforates the paper so it folds crisply on the line, shows the line from the blank side, and lifts away cleanly at the end. The second is that she takes the paper off before joining the units, and explains why instead of just doing it. The usual advice is to leave it in, because the paper stabilizes edges that have ended up off grain. On this block every edge sits on the straight or the cross grain, nothing can stretch, and the paper comes away far more easily now than after the block is assembled.
If the quilt as you go part is what caught your eye, our complete guide to quilt as you go covers the methods, how to quilt a block before it is joined, and how to close the seams between finished blocks.
The channel is Pattern Poole TV, where Monica and Alaura Poole post quilt as you go tutorials and mystery quilt alongs.
