Quilting with Freezer Paper Templates

A September Quilt

My favorite way to quilt is free styling with my darning foot or straight line with my walking foot, but occasionally I want to try a new motif that I need to work on how to FMQ.  So I make a template using freezer paper for this purpose.  I also sometimes make a freezer paper template to fit a border or specific space. 

I did both of these for this fall quilt that I made last September.

Here is how I did this:

 

I made my own freezer paper stencils sized for my quilt.

I drew the design on the paper side and pressed the plastic coated side to my quilt with a warm iron to hold them in place for quilting.

 

 

I decided to do primitive 5 point stars for this quilt

 to compliment the fabrics and design.

Now that I have done these a few times, I think I could easily make these stars free form, but these stencils helped me learn
and to keep them uniform in size.

 

I cute the centers out of the stars carefully with a sharp craft knife.



I prepared the quilt sandwich and pinned on the outer edges only,

back and front.

 

 

I actually use as few pins as possible on quilts. 

I am very careful to smooth front and back a few times and move pins as needed before I am ready to quilt. While quilting, I turn the quilt over frequently to be sure I have no folds in my backing. This works best for a small quilt, of course, but I use the same method for a larger quilt on my home machine.  Sometimes I pin only one section as I work on it and remove and repin for the next section for a larger quilt.

Works for me!

 



 

I laid my templates on my quilt and pressed in place with a warm iron.

The templates peel off easily to be moved and reused

and leave no marks on my fabric.

 

For these templates I "quilted inside the lines,"

 

 I started in the middle and did the individual stars first.

 

 

The I did the small two star templates in the sashing.

 

 

Then I did the outside borders

 

 I planned my way and marked my template with direction arrows

and where to start, turn and finish.

 

 

Here is the turn on the other end.

 



 

I keep my iron handy for touch ups as needed.

 

 

Sometimes I need to add a little tape for the longer templates to keep it fixed and to help the edges from curling.

I then need to be careful not to touch the tape with the hot iron.

 



 

Then I placed moved the template to the opposite side.

These two sides had five stars and went corner to corner.

 

 

For the other two sides, I only needed to fit three stars in between the stars on the corners.  I used the same stencil only

I marked the turn for the shorter borders.

 

These templates are durable and can be reused

 

 ... and saved for another day.

 

 

I have used freezer paper templates and guides for other quilts, too.

 

On this table runner I wanted a uniform size and shape and

I quilted outside the edges of the template.

I just moved the template as I went along. 

 

Then I made parallel quilting lines outward to the edge of the tablerunner.

 

 

For this quilt, I used the template as a guide

 

 

to keep the curve uniform on each flower petal.

 

I hope you have found this tutorial helpful.

 

Happy Quilting!

 

~ <3> ~