The short answer is no, you can just use printer paper for foundation paper piecing. But the longer answer is that our foundation paper has several benefits which will make foundation piecing so much easier!
Below are the reasons why it’s best to use a purpose designed foundation paper:
- It is semi transparent which makes fabric placement much easier. You start foundation piecing by gluing your first fabric piece onto the back of your paper – with the design printed on the front. With printer paper you can’t easily see if the fabric is covering the relevant area of the design without holding it up to the light, with our paper you can because of the transparency.
- It tears away easily! This is what puts many people off paper piecing, they struggle to remove the papers afterwards and have to faff around with tweezers pulling tiny pieces of paper out from the stitching. You don’t have to do that with our foundation paper it rips away easily without leaving bits behind.
- It’s heat resistant. There’s a lot of pressing involved in paper piecing and many papers scorch or curl up under the heat of the iron. Our paper does neither, you can put the iron directly on it for several seconds and suffer no adverse affects.
- It can survive being unpicked several times! This was an essential for us, I don’t think I’ve made many foundation pieced projects without a little seam ripping being involved. A lot of paper starts to fall apart once you’ve unpicked it a few times, then you have to go through the hassle of re-printing your pattern again. I’ve unpicked ours 2 or 3 times on occasions and it’s still intact and ready for you to sew again.
- Easy to fold – You need to fold along the lines of your design to trim the seam allowance off the fabric. Our paper is thinner than regular paper so it’s easier to fold it along your printed lines.
Foundation paper piecing can be a fiddly technique, why make it any more difficult but using something not designed for the job?
Why not check out our free foundation piecing projects and order a pack of our British made foundation paper and give it a try. If you are new to foundation paper piecing we have a beginner’s guide here. We’ve had so many people who have tried it and said they will never go back to using printer paper now they realise how much easier our foundation paper makes it.