Strolling Down the Paper Piecing Path with Carol Doak

I became a fan of Carol's when I watched her on The Quilt Show online and saw her dedication to accuracy and simplifying the process. Her book Simply Sensational 9-Patch Stars turned my pathetic attempts to piece a quilt into a startling success when I followed her thorough and easy to follow step-by-step directions. For someone whose points never came out pointy or whose seams never aligned Carol's instructions and paper piecing in general seemed miraculous!

I do hope you'll welcome Carol. She has a great sense of humor and unlimited patience. Mega talent, too! I attribute her single handedly with turning me into a happy and content, frustration free 'accurate' quilt maker. -- Dawn

Photo of quilt Scrap Stars mini pattern available on Carol's website. Size 12 1/2 x 12 1/2-inches.  

by Carol Doak

When I embarked down the paper-pieced blocks path 15 years ago, I had no clue this concept would consume me for years and years to come.

I actually wrote about this method of creating patchwork on a paper foundation in a magazine article about that time. I wrote that when you approach what you normally do from a new perspective, you would come up with new ideas. I had no clue I would write 14 books on this subject.

I had no idea this method would become a staple in the quilting community. You only need to pick up the latest magazine and see paper-pieced patterns to confirm this. So why did that happen? Upon reflection, it was actually several paths merging that caught my attention and others' and held it.

First, I am a quilt teacher and being able to teach others how to succeed at perfect patchwork easily was a no-brainer!

Paper piecing is a method, not an acquired skill, so someone who has never created patchwork can succeed with this method. I think the old adage; "Nothing succeeds like success" is the reason people love paper piecing. Once you learn how to do this technique properly, you can always count on a successful completed project. (See 2nd photo from Carol's book of 300 Paper-Pieced Quilt Blocks) 

When people do not learn the proper way to paper piece, they do run into stressful situations like not having cut the correct size fabric piece or they place it incorrectly. With just a bit of time invested to learn how to paper piece, you can count on success every time! When I teach a class, I can have students who have never paper-pieced achieve the same success as those who have because it is a method.

Second, I am a designer. Being able to design innovative and dramatic blocks and quilts featuring this method offers excitement. There are constraints with paper piecing such as the requirement to sew in a sequence covering preceding intersecting seams, but the challenge can also offer creative solutions such as making units and mixing and matching them. Because accuracy is so easily achieved, the designs I can create using this method can be so dramatic. They can possess those long narrow dramatic points with multiple merging seams, but the method to create them is easy! We all love easy! (Photo 3 features a quilt Carol made using blocks from her 50 Fabulous Paper-Pieced Stars book)

Third, I am somewhat of an organizer. I love creating an organized sequence for my work as well as my designs. I create cutting lists for the fabric pieces; pre-cut them into strips and then pieces. The pieces are labeled with the location numbers and set on a tray to take to the sewing machine. The blocks are assembly line sewn so the work goes quickly and each step is consistent. I don't like surprises!

Now, when you have a winner, it pays to explore all the options. This wonderful method has taken me from small blocks and quilts like those in Easy Machine Paper Piecing and 300 Paper-Pieced Quilt Blocks. It has taken me to larger blocks like the Simply Sensational 9-Patch Stars, Mariner's Compass Stars and 50 Fabulous Paper-Pieced Stars. I have even made fun miniatures quilts like those in Easy Paper-Pieced Miniatures and incorporated blocks in vests like those in Easy Reversible Vests. (Photo 4: Royal Medallion Quilt from the Mariner's Compass Stars book featuring the England block)

Now, I don't believe I have reached the end of the path with this fun and accurate technique. I am just looking around the corner to see where it will lead me next.

Check out Carol Doak's website and Yahoo group.


(Last photo: 9 Patch Sampler Quilt featuring some of the state star blocks in Simply Sensational 9-Patch Stars.)

Quilting a metaphor for life or the 'if it can go wrong it will' quilt block

I am obviously NO quilt artist.

I barely qualify as a quilter with only a few finished projects. I tend to write about other people's accomplishments and fabric art and quilts instead of making my own. One quilt artist referred to me as a cheerleader. I guess that's as accurate as any label.

But during a venture into paper piecing I stumbled upon a truth that too often is forgotten. No professional, artist, master quilter makes a completed work of art without some effort and yes frustration and YES -- ripping!

And I also discovered that even with all of those stumbles and do-overs, when you enjoy what you have a sense of where the project is heading or have a vision of what you want to create -- well, there's a certain determination and even joy in overcoming the problems set in your way.

I guess this could be a metaphor for life. Maybe this little 9-patch star is a metaphor for my life. Such potential here less than half completed. And yes, it is imperfect. Like me. Can you pick out the square -- the one where I cut off the seam allowance?

Yes, this definitely has been a 'if it could go wrong it did' project. And it isn't finished, yet. 

This began after watching Carol Doak's video on paper piecing at The Quilt Show, Alex Anderson's and Ricky Tim's internet show and quilting community. I searched the Internet and found a pattern for a modest little tulip square. There are tons of paper piecing patterns, free for the taking online. Here's a photo of my first little tulip. My husband says it looks more like an ice cream cone -- I have to agree. Poor choices of color, I think.

With that first attempt, I was hooked on paper piecing. I grew up among traditional quilters who judged a quilt on perfection. Perfectly aligned corners, sharp star points, teeny tiny even hand quilting stitches.... Well, you know I'm sure what I'm talking about.

It just so happened that I have a copy of Carol Doak's earlier book Simply Sensational 9-Patch Stars and decided on one star to make. Not too intricate, doable. Definitely within a beginner's realm. And the paper piecing went smoothly. Carol includes a CD with the book that allows downloading a Foundation software and from there I can print off the patterns.

Easy! No problem.

The problem came with my rusty sewing skills and absent minded senior-moment brain! I carefully worked out the fabric placement then the very first piece I sewed into place was WRONG. I precut strips to the sizes Carol suggested for the pieces and when I begn to use them I realized that I had no idea where I got some of those dimensions but they made no sense. What was I thinking?

I asked that question alot!

What was I thinking indeed when I cut the seam allowance off the side of one of the nine-patches. And what was I thinking when I put a couple of fabrics on and realized after they were sewed in place that they didn't quite cover the required area! Rip! Rip! Rip! Or as someone kindly suggested 'reverse sewing....'

Just when I thought I'd finished with the tough stuff. All squares were paper pieced and were done correctly. So I sewed them together. First two rows of three -- perfect. OK, I STARTED to place one upside down, but caught it before the first stitch.

And then I held it up -- all done. And there was the last row UPSIDE DOWN!

Rip! Rip! Rip! I don't think I have ever done as much reverse sewing and re-sewing on any project including the clothing and home decorations I have made through the years!

Finally finished.

Maybe not totally perfect. But I'm impressed. And yet I didn't want it to just be one square. I was making it to use with a couple of other 12-inch blocks I had previously made from the same fabric.

Now how does one make three 12-inch blocks and end up with a 12 inch, an 11--plus inch and a 12-plus-inch square?

I squared them up, added border and went to reach for some black to run along oneside to turn this into a wall hanging that says 'welcome.'

Did you guess? Of course I cannot find my stash of black cotton fabric. Will this project ever truly reach the 'finish' line and will it actually turn out okay? Stay tuned! :)

I've included a photo of the blocks set together. The center star is the one taken from the Carol Doak book.

Oh, and of course the photo wouldn't download on first try. Do I really trust this wallhanging to stop giving me trouble after it is completed?!

My experience is only a sample of what others have gone through to finally complete their quilt whether it is for a bed, a wall, an exhibit, or an award winner.... Everyone who sews have days like this. As with life it is not meant to be easy -- but the process, the journey, ahhh there's the fun. The challenge. Overcoming. Yes, and like childbirth no matter how ugly -- looking at the thing you've created and knowing that you've put a bit of yourself into it. Pure joy!

So as you read the guest blogs -- read between the lines and realize that each piece of fabric art that touches our hearts and gives us glimpses of breath taking beauty included pin pricks, ripping ripping ripping, and redos many many redos. But they persevered.

You can do it! We can do it! And it is all worthwhile. Ever had a day or a project like this one? Tell me more! -- Dawn

Mary Kay Mouton: Fresh idea leads to first book

Flip-Flop Paper Piecing:Revolutionary Single-Foundation Technique • 52 Full-Size Patterns
by Mary Kay Mouton
C&T Publishing, Feb. 16, 2009 $27.95

Delivered to book shelves for sale beginning Feb. 16: Mary Kay Mouton's first book for C&T Publishing. It features a new twist on foundation piecing.

The author, originally from Illinois now lives in Milledgeville, Georgia where she is a member of the Lake Oconee Quilt Guild, a local bee group called the Old Capital Stitchers, and the Georgia Quilt Council.

Her quilts have been juried into The Pacific International Quilt Festival, Quilt Odyssey, The Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza, The American Quilter's Society Annual Quilt Show & Contest, The American Quilter's Society Quilt Exposition, The American Sewing Exposition, and Road to California. She won ribbons at The American Quilter's Society Annual Quilt Show & Contest (Honorable Mention), The Pacific International Quilt Festival (Second Place), The American Sewing Exposition (Second Place), and most recently Road to California (First Place -- shown below). She will begin teaching her first class in April.

Photos: cover of her book; sampler of some of her quilt blocks pieced using her new technique; 18x18-inch quilt that won first place in the Road to California Quilt Show; book author Mary Kay Mouton; and last a detailed photo of four-basket quilt square.


Mary Kay Mouton in her own words:

It was in the making of a pieced border for one of my art quilts that I fumbled into Flip-Flop Paper Piecing. I was constructing a block featuring a plaid fabric. Because I am nothing if not compulsive, I wanted that plaid to look continuous across the block, to be perfectly matched. And yet, I was tired just thinking of fussy cutting each piece and sewing each so precisely that the plaid would appear undisturbed, though actually broken by other non-plaids pieces in the block.

Suddenly I thought, why not just plop the plaid fabric down on a printed paper foundation. Then insert the other non-plaid fabrics by sewing them from both sides of the foundation! The plaid would look continuous because it would be continuous, and it would be precise because it would be foundation pieced on a printed foundation. By golly, I was on to something here!

Once I performed that first basic Work-Alternately-On-Both-Sides-Of-the-Foundation maneuver, my mind was flooded with one variation after another of what has come to be called Flip-Flop Paper Piecing (so named because the foundation is flipped back & forth, back & forth, flip flop, flip flop, as seams are sewn first on one side of the foundation, and then the other).

Sewing has been a passion since I first became armed and dangerous, needle-wise, at the age of 12. My mother took me to Singers' summer sewing classes. I have never had a better time, and I have never been the same since. As I progressed, I made everything from lined wool suits to jeans to underwear (but take my wise advice, underwear is better purchased than made). Indeed, I was rarely seen without a tape measure hanging around my neck.

I grew up, though, to become a Medical Records Administrator, very practical, very dull, very unsubversive. Next along came marriage, and oh-my-goodness-a-baby-changes-everything. My plans were to go back to work when my babies went off to school, but life intervened. A home-based business using my sewing skills came to my rescue. I made and repaired doll clothes. In my "spare time," mostly at odd moments stolen between the math tutoring and the potato mashing, I developed my only passion outside my family and my cat: quilting.

Quilting is the best of sewing.
It doesn't have to fit, and it can
never make you look fat.

(I still mourn over the perfectly executed, striped linen suit that was, shall we say, less than flattering.) I started competition quilting. There is nothing like the thrill of having your quilts accepted into national quilt shows, ribbon won or not.

My quilts were largely appliqué, and generally nostalgic art with just a bit of piecing thrown in for contrast. But, as I worked with my new technique, I discovered hundreds, even thousands, of blocks could be pieced, each on its own undivided paper foundation. My greatest inspiration came one night, when half-asleep, dreaming of, what else, quilting, I sprang up to consciousness with the realization I could piece an 8-pointed Lemoyne Star, Flip-Flop-style. And once you have a Lemoyne Star, a Mariner's Compass is not far behind.

I developed 13 maneuvers in my piecing system, and submitted them to C&T Publishing, who, bless their little hearts, decided they'd take me in and publish my book. Now anyone can learn to Flip-Flop Paper Piece. Precision sewing no longer requires either exact and careful cutting, or the meticulous stitching of an "accurate" 1/4" seam. Nor does it demand constant measuring, and seam ripping, and resewing as the block is constructed. A little Flip-Flop maneuver here and there will produce precision, painlessly.

And the beauty part is that Flip-Flop Paper Piecing fits any quilting style or genre. The final product can be an innovative swirl of distorted blocks, a pieced landscape, or a reproduction of an antique masterpiece. It's all up to the individual subverter. Flip-Flopping is a technique with the speed and accuracy of traditional foundation piecing but with a range as limitless as our imaginations: There are Flip-Flop circles & Flip-Flop borders, Flip-Flop trees and Flip-Flop Houses, and a sky full of Flip -Flop stars. I love this technique.

Civil War quilter's Crown of Thorns

When recalling the Civil War, Georgia, South Carolina, even Pennsylvania spring to mind. These were the scenes of major battles, loss of life, and other than Pennsylvania, antebellum slavery.

But the impetus that catapulted the United States into the bloody civil war focused in a Midwestern location: Kansas. The border between Kansas and Missouri became a battlefield long before the war began in 1861.

By the 1850s, pro-slavery and 'free soilers' or abolition factions were racing to claim the new state of Kansas for themselves. The one with the most population could vote to turn the state toward their own politics so that it could enter the union as a slave or a free state.

Caught in the middle of this were the families. In Barbara Brackman's book Civil War Women, she includes a chapter on Bursheba Fristoe Younger. If you have watched many Westerns -- movies and television, you will have heard of Cole Younger and other outlaws who made the West so wild. Until reading Brackman's account, I didn't realize what motivated those men to turn to such a violent criminal behavior.

Brackman imagines that Bursheba would have chosen the Crown of Thorns pattern to symbolize her "trials in the midst of the worst guerrilla warfare ever to take place in the United States." Perhaps she wouldn't have made hers quite so bright nor set the crowns in this configuration, but as you can see from the photo, it looks like a rather prickly pattern.

Her trials were many. Bursheba's husband, Henry Younger, a good husband by all accounts, promoted slavery in Kansas. He voted in the Kansas territorial elections and was a representative in the first Territorial Legislature which is referred to as the "Bogus Legislature". This legislature held a pro-slavery stance and many members were not Kansas residents.

Once the war broke out, Younger returned to his farm and family only to be targeted as an enemy of the Kansas Free State cause. On July 1862, Henry's dead body was found lying in the road near the Shawnee Indian Mission on the state line. Ironically, the wad of cash found on his body was returned to his wife, eliminating any thought that this was a robbery. It is possible he was killed for the crimes his sons were committing as guerrillas. But their father's death only embittered Cole and Jim and made them more determined to exact retribution.

Bursheba inherited an impressive bit of money and land but with the war, lack of a justice system and outlaws, she couldn't make a profit from the farm Soldiers and bandits stole most of her stock and eventually without Henry, Bursheba lost everything. Federal troops threatened to burn down her house, but they allowed her one more night to spare a sick daughter. The cost -- the next morning Bursheba must put the torch to her own home, which she did.

Probably aided by the guerrillas, she and her four remaining children moved from one relative's house to another, sometimes hiding in the woods and caves along the Little Blue and Sni Rivers, according to Brackman.

In August, 1863, several women died under the rock walls of a collapsing jail where they were being held because of their affiliation with the guerrillas and fugitives. In retribution, 400 Missourians raided the Free-State symbol, Lawrence, Kansas. "In two or three hours, the Missourians murdered 185 men and boys."

Bursheba returned to her home in 1870, but her three sons refused to live within the law. They joined up with some neighbors you may have heard of, the James boys, and robbed banks. Bursheba died at the age of 54, shortly after her youngest son, John, was hung and then cut down just short of death, by a mob trying to get him to tell where his outlaw brothers were.

Crown of thorns definitely would fit the tribulations of one lone woman in a sea of trouble on the Kansas-Missouri border during the Civil War. Although with the wars and turbulence of today, I can see the relevance of the pattern now.

Here's a contemporary paper piecing pattern for the Crown of Thorns by Judy Niemeyer.