Sewing circles without worries tutorial part one

I would like to share a technique with you that I learned a long time ago by Sharon Schamber. It is a way of piecing circles, or any shape without worry of seam allowance. Keeping the correct seam allowance under the foot on curves is the hard part, but we will use freezer paper as a guide and stabilizer.

 just for the purpose of learning the technique I will give you sizes to cut, however you can do this technique with any size or shape block or center.

Cut a 6 inch block of background fabric and of...

Freezer paper.
Cut the same size and shape from freezer paper
as your background. I did this with an archway once.

 fold it in fourths and you will then cut a circle out of the folded corner

I use one of my acrylic circle or drunkard's path templates. You will choose the size of opening you want.It must be small enough to leave a seam allowance on the background but large enough to showcase your focus fabric.

Use that cut out circle, which is exactly the right size, as a template to cut out your focus fabric. This is the one you want showing through the background. I cut it a good half inch away from the F.P.

Iron the FP to back of your background. In this case, fold it in half, roughly cut out the center leaving about a half inch seam allowance, and clip almost to the FP

using a water soluble glue stick, UHU is best, run a small amount of glue along the clipped edge and a bit of the paper

Using your finger, open the clipped fabric and push over the edge of your FP so that it sticks to the paper smoothly. This will be the exact edge of your opening so you want it to look perfect. If you have a glitch, you might need to clip closer

After you have pressed the fabric back onto the paper it will look like this.

Since this is a picture heavy post I will do the next sections later. Please
see part two here click here!

LeeAnna