The day I learned about foundation piecing was a great day in my wall hanging career. The book that taught me was Precision Pieced Quilts Using the Foundation Method by Jane Hall and Dixie Haywood. The technique solved some problems I encountered while trying to piece and quilt knitted fabric.
You place your patches onto a piece of fabric called the foundation fabric. You won’t be able to see the foundation fabric in the finished quilt. I use fabrics that have been around the house for a while without being used. “A while” means years in the case of this Halloween theme fabric.
To help me orient the pieces on the fabric, I ironed creases in the fabric at halfway points. The pattern poster was also folded at the same points. As I placed the first flower and leaf pieces on the fabric, I lined up the folds.
The edges of the patches are snugged right up next to each other—no overlap.
I love to work jigsaw puzzles, so this was fun to do. Thank goodness for the second poster, though. I had to consult it several times to figure out how a certain petal fit—even though the petals were numbered.
The poster pattern plan worked well!
I took the paper patterns off, and pinned the knitted patches onto the foundation fabric.
I zig-zag stitched the patches together, with a zig in one patch and the zag in the patch next to it. At the same time, the zig-zag stitches sewed the pieces to the foundation.