Saturday, January 26, 2013

Preparing Paper Piecing Patterns

I am on the committee for our Opportunity Quilt this year and the chosen pattern is a Pineapple to be paper pieced by the committee.  We met and talked about the usual things, size, colors, borders, etc.  A trip was made to our local quilt shop to purchase fabric and a sew date at my home was scheduled for next week.  The fabric was left with me and I volunteered to print the foundation paper.
I had previously searched Quilter's Cache for a pattern and had printed it off using regular paper on my little inexpensive printer I use with my Electric Quilt.  I measured the test square and it was perfect.  So this morning my wonderful hubby volunteered to run the copies onto the foundation paper for me on his printer.  I was every so appreciative of his offer and asked him to let me measure one before printing the remainder.  The printing took an unusually long time and that in its self raised a red flag for me and sure enough upon measuring the pattern was off.  Not only the test square but the pattern itself was off considerably.  We discussed using my little printer but hubby wanted to try another larger  printer.  Hubby likes things like that so we are a two person household with three working printers and I was so happy that was the case because the larger printer printed quickly and 100% accurately.
So my point in all this to measure, measure, measure when preparing your foundations for paper piecing.  I know this has been said a lot but can't be stressed enough, same brand of printers but different models do not print the same.
Enjoy your weekend and I hope you get to set aside a little time for quilting.

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