Brenda's Favorite Tools for Foundation Piecing 1. Spray starch Saturate your fabric and iron it until it is as stiff as paper. It makes the fabric easy to place below the foundation and the small pieces won't fold back when you sew. Once you're sewing though, no steam and no starch. It will make the paper wrinkle.

2. Schmetz Microtex Sharp Needles, size 70/10 Larger needles don't help your paper tear away; a short stitch length does that. I like to use a small, sharp needle to keep my seams accurate.

3. Single-needle throat plate (not shown) Tiny pieces can be pulled into a zigzag throat plate. This one has a tiny hole, just large enough for the needle. Saves tearing fabric out of the bobbin case and saves you from tearing out your hair!

4. Open Toe Foot (see photo B) So you can see where you're sewing!

5. Portable Sewing Table It makes a perfect staging area and keeps the pieces flat as you feed them under the presser foot. I like to use it as a base for clipping threads between my pieces too.

6. Fiskars SofTouch® Micro-Tip® Scissors They're the perfect size for clipping threads and trimming short seam allowances. Because they're spring loaded, you just squeeze to cut, and they pop back by themselves, saving your hand muscles half the work. (Great if you have arthritis.)

7. Brooklyn Revolver This rotary cutting mat is attached to a revolving base, making it easy to trim those final seam allowances without having to lift the block.

USER COMMENTS

rog50cec

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I See!

Have seen these type of instructions before but you pictures were great.

Nov 02, 2009 at 09:20 AM

lneeley

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I'm doing it!

Your instructions are so clear, I can understand them, so I'm doing it.

Aug 10, 2009 at 05:41 PM