Paper Piecing Tutorial- How To Make A Star

As you may know from a previous post, I made a quilt of paper pieced stars.  I can’t just show off my finished project without also walking you through the steps.  Giving you the skills and tools needed to make your quilts is the whole point of this blog.

Today I’m going to take you step by step through making a paper pieced star.  This is the Sunny Star, the FREE printable template can be found here.

Paper piecing patterns have the lines for sewing on printed in bold, and the seam allowance (1/4 inch) printed lightly.  What you see here will make up one corner of the block, you’ll need 4 copies.

Coloring helps keep track of which colors go where, just don’t color in crayon.  I made that mistake the first time.  You’re going to sew your fabric right onto this piece of paper.  And iron it.  A million times.  Guess what?  Crayon and an iron are not a good combo!

I’ve also found that coloring through the seam allowance as well helps me to better visualize the size of fabric needed to cover the space.

There are numbers in each shape to tell you the order of fabric to sew to the paper foundation.  My thumb is covering it (photography skills is still one of my goals for the year) but the yellow trapezoid is number 1, and the blue triangle below it is number 2.

With the printed side of the paper facing you, take your first piece of fabric (yellow polka dots!) and place it on the back of the paper, with the wrong side of the fabric against the paper.

You can use a glue stick to secure it in place if you desire, but I skipped this step, since it was small enough to hold in place.

Take a blue triangle that is large enough to cover area #2.

Place it right sides together on your fabric #1, so that the edge is approximately ¼ of an inch over the line, and exactly parallel to the line.  Remember, your fabric is going on the blank side of the paper, not the printed side.

Holding in place and turning back to look at the printed side, you can see a little bit of the blue triangle sticking out to the right, that shows it is parallel and the correct distance from the line.

Using a shorter than normal stitch length (to make ripping the paper out later much easier), sew right on the line, from one side of the seam allowance to the other.

Iron into place.  It’s okay that some of your fabric is hanging over the edges.  You’ll trim it later.  Here are views of both the front and back at this point.

Repeat with a piece of blue fabric large enough to cover triangle #3.  The fabric (white plus on blue fabric) should be right sides together, the edge should be parallel to the line between numbers 1 and 3, and at least a ¼ inch past the line.

Repeat with triangles #4 and then #5.  Remember, my triangle is blue and yellow, and my background is grey.

I always check the make sure the fabric lines up correctly to cover the intended part of the paper before ironing, here is a great example of a time it didn’t line up correctly.  Use fine scissors to cut the thread in the seam, re-position and try again.  Be careful when taking apart the seam, to prevent the paper from ripping.

Now that triangle #5 has been re-sewn correctly, you’ve got 1/8 of a finished block!  It looks pretty funky here, but that’s because the edges haven’t been trimmed yet.

Turn it back over so you are looking at the printed side, and trim along the seam allowance line.  It should be printed lightly outside of the seam lines, and it should be ¼ inch from the seam line.

Throw away the scraps, and now you have an actual 1/8 of a star block!

Repeat to make the other 7 pieces.

Sew 2 triangles together, along the seam line, matching all of the points and iron the seam open.  Repeat with the other 6 triangles to make 4 squares.

Sew the squares into pairs, iron seam open, and sew the pairs into the finished star.  Always line up seams lines and points before stitching, to create perfect points throughout your star!

This is what the star looks like, and this is the back of the block.  Paper piecing is just as beautiful on the back as the front.

At this point you can carefully tear out the paper, taking care not to damage the seams.  Tweezers help with this process!

Once you’ve made one star, you can make any!