TUTORIAL: Paper Piecings by Hand – Using the Computer

[Mischief_Managed]

While completing the Paper Piecing Swap, I thought some of you might want to see how to maximize your time and minimize your paper to do them. I tried to be as basic as possible, and give step by step instructions when needed. If I glossed over an area that needs better instructions, please let me know and I will update/edit it. Enjoy!

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I love to do paper piecings by hand, it’s what I did before I got the Cricut. But some people are afraid of paper piecing by hand, but if you have some patience, the results are limitless and often fun – you can possibly never buy a Jolee’s again.

I wanted to show you how to use a simple Paint software application to minimize the paper waste when making a paper piecing, as well as show you how to place on the paper and assemble. I don’t actually use Paint to do the cropping and such when I do it (I use a photo imaging software), but wanted to show that you don’t have to have fancy (expensive) software to do this.

First, I did a Google search for “woody woodpecker” and “coloring page”. And found one I liked, which I saved from the website as a JPEG. (To find Paint on your computer, it’s usually in “Programs” -> “Accessories”.) I then opened the coloring page in Paint, as you can see below. However, I only want to make Woody, and not his girlfriend, so this is where using the software will help.

Using the select button on the lefthand side top (the dashed rectangle), you can “crop” the picture as you want it. One thing about Paint is it’s not truly a crop function, so if you don’t get everything in the box that you want, you have to create the box again. To select the area you want, click on the dashed rectangle, then go to image and click and hold while you drag the mouse to include all that you want. As I said, you might have to try a couple of times to include all parts that you want. I think I captured what I wanted below, so without clicking anywhere else in the work space, go to “Edit” -> “Copy”, then “File” -> “New”, do not save changes when asked. When the new page opens, click “Edit” -> “Paste”.

This is the image (below) you will get with the new paste. At this point, it’s good to save your work – make sure to keep the item selected (the image will have the dashed line around it) – and choose a name different from your original JPEG coloring page. Just wanted to make a note here about keeping the image selected, you can let the Software select your image by clicking “Edit” -> “Select” (probably the best way) or you can select it yourself using the button on the lefthand side (the dashed rectangle). I chose to draw it in using the rectangle function, and didn’t actually do a good job, which you will see why that matters later on.

But now I have an image with Woody’s girlfriend that I don’t want, plus she is “attached” to him. Well, the benefits of using Paint are you can remove her (using the Eraser function – under the dashed star) and you can draw in the missing parts. You will get the image below.

Continued in next post…

 

[Mischief_Managed]

Using a combination of the Draw (pencil) function and the Curved line function (under the big A), I get the following image below, which is pretty much ready to go.

If you wanted to, you can print this image out on several sheets of different colored cardstock, and then only cut out what you need. But you will be wasting lots of paper – especially for the small parts like the red of the tongue. So now you can use the Select function (dashed rectangle) to crop what you need.

One note here, when doing paper piecings by hand, you have the availability to add dimension (via pop dots), so it helps to think about what layers you will doing. But if you just want to start out with one layer, and no pop dots, you still have to think about what the base color will be and how you will build on that. For Woody, I figure the white would be the easiest base to have, then I don’t have to worry about the whites of his eyes. So I leave one Woody the full image for the base (white paper). For the next layer, in this case red, I selected just the head and neck (using the dashed rectangle), and then “Edit” -> “Copy”, then “File” -> “New”, do not save changes when asked. When the new page opens, click “Edit” -> “Paste”. Then make sure to save it using a new file name – I usually choose the image-color, so I know what paper color I need.

When you need to crop the next part (color), just click open the original image (if you are using the one straight from the coloring page) or the image that you altered to meet your needs (in this case, the one sans Woody’s girlfriend – I should really learn her name!). Once opened just keep selecting the section (color) you need, copying it onto a new page, saving it as a new file name, and then reopening the original file. You can see below I selected the feet for the orange.

Now that you have all the images saved, you can use Word to place the images on the page. Open a new page, then click “Insert” -> “Picture” -> “From File”, and select the image that will serve as your base. Depending on your original image that you saved, it may be too big – in this case it was – so you can resize it to match your needs. Right-click on the image, select “Format Picture” -> hit the “Size” tab, and then make sure the check is next to “Lock aspect ratio” and “Relative to original picture size”. Then use the arrows to either decrease it by inches or by scale.

Continued in next post…

 

[Mischief_Managed]

When you have the size you want, you must remember the scale (percentage) to make sure every other piece matches that size. If you are doing more than one paper piecing, like for a swap, you can right-click on the image, select “Copy” and then hit the paste button (or “Edit” -> “Paste”). Keeping doing this to get the number of images you need. You can hit the spacebar or tab before hitting the paste button to give each piece more “elbow room”. To make your life easier, and in case you want to make more of the same paper piecing later, you can save the Word document by name of image and color (again, to help you remember what paper color you need when you go to print). Then open a new page, do the insert picture from file, and resize the next piece to match the scale of the base image. Copy and paste as many as you need. Save the Word file with color name. And continue this process until all the colors/pieces have been created. Then print what you have.

You can see the images/paper below. You will see that I was able to minimize my paper usage greatly. I also wanted to point out the black line next to the Woody’s right side – that’s from me selecting the image, and getting some of the gray background from Paint. In this case, it’s not that important that it’s there because I will be cutting it off. But I just wanted to point out that it can happen if you select the image yourself, and are not careful about staying within the image area.

Now the fun begins of cutting everything. Just take lots of breaks because your hand will hurt, have all the lights on because sometimes it’s hard to see the lines, and buy Cutter bee scissors – they are the paper piecers best friend with their super sharp point. If you want to pop dot, make sure to keep those parts separate.

Then just assemble the pieces.

You can also use markers to outline the pieces better. Or in my case, I colored in his eyes with markers, and colored his neck and tongue because that red was just too small to deal with. Depending on the paper piecing, you can also use stickles or glossy accents to really make it pop. For smaller images, I like to use glossy accents on the eyes, but Woody’s eyes are too big, and I think it would like weird.

And here you have Woody!

I hope this helps you take the chance to create your own paper piecing by hand. Start with big, easy pictures – such as those with minimal colors and big, round cuts, as opposed to lots of tight, jagged cuts. You can also experiment with pop dotting different parts to make it 3D. Woody’s head is pop-dotted above.

If interested, I have some tips about cutting the pieces – making it easier, and making the assembled pieces look more polished. But I wanted this tutorial to be more about the beginning process of paper piecing – the computer part. Let me know if you want that too, and I can post some tips about cutting and assembling – although there is a tutorial on how to do that here - http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1717981. So to not duplicate that tutorial, I can just post the tips with some photos.

Thanks for looking. If you have questions or comments, please post.

 

[kkbeaton2]

Great tutorial! I have been wanting to try some hand paper piecing, but have been afraid to try. Thanks for the push!

 

[ddavis860]

Mischief Managed that was amazing! Thanks for taking the time to share that! I've never used paint, and I think I can do it now!

I really appreciate the time you spent! Thanks!!

 

[AlexWyattMommy]

Thank you so much. I was giving myself a headache trying to figure out "layers" in the PhotoShop CS3. Just erasing & drawing in paint looks so much easier.

You did a lot of work.

I think needs to be added in our sticky.

 

[123SA]

THanks! I've been printing the entire image just to cut out a little tongue! I have been wasting tons of paper. This is something I think I can do.

 

[PrincessNancy96]

I will add this to the tips/techniques sticky!!!!

Thank you for the great tutorial!!!

 

[pjlla]

Wow... that looks so neat! Although I'm sure your tutorial seemed easy to some, I would be baffled unless I went word by word! Maybe someday I'll give it a try! Thanks so much for sharing that lesson... it must have taken you tons of time!................P

 

[lck33]

That was awesome. Thank you so much, you are so sweet to have spent so much time to do this for us. You are the best! Hope I can do this. I will give it a go this weekend.

Elsie

 

[missesdisney]

I am a computer girl and I can follow that! Thank you - duh. I stayed away from it because I didn't want to print a bazillion times. How funny. I might just try one of these for the flock swap....

 

[LindaBabe]

This thread should be stickied into the techniques faq somehow! GREAT instructions.

 

[Mom-to-2-Princesses]

Thank you!

I was working on the computer for a paper piecing yesterday and getting very frustrated. I have a nice expensive program with no eraser capabilities! Paint is just what I needed to clean up some pictures.

 

[hopemax]

I should have done this earlier when I was hosting the Paper Piecing Swap, but the images I were using were on the complicated side to do instructions with. However, the piece I am doing for the Character Swap is less crazy, so I made instructions for Paint Shop Pro and using layers. I don't have PhotoShop but you should be able to do all of the same things, but I don't where in the menus you have to look and if all the terminology is the same.

Paper Piecing Tutorial Using Paint Shop Pro X

If you have a different version of PSP, the things might be in different places

Cleaning Up the Image

The image I am using for Brer Bear came from a Child's placemat from Dixie Landings from the 90s. I scanned the image, only selecting the area around Brer Bear to be scanned. I cropped the image as much as I could. And I resized to the size I wanted. In this case he is about 4.5x5.

The cropping left some random lines, from other parts of the image, around Brer Bear that I did not want to include in my image. I used the regular Eraser to erase those lines

When I work on my images, I prefer a transparent image. The coloring pages don't scan completely white, so when you print them, you get an unwanted hazy effect. To quickly, erase all the whiteish areas I use the Background Eraser tool. This tool uses Tolerance to figure out what areas should be erased. I have mine set, very high, to get all the whiteish area. If you notice the lines you want starting to disappear, you probably have the Tolerance too high. leaving stuff behind, it's probably too low. Also, make sure you are clicking only in the whiteish areas, if the mouse pointer goes over the darker lines, it will start erasing that, and we don't want that.

Once the image is transparent, I use the Flood Fill tool to make all the lines black. On some coloring pages, they may seem black enough for you already. But this placemat used a greenish color, and I want black.

Where Hope Gets Anal

I am very picky about my images, so to make sure everything is really clean, I use the Negative Image for assistance. It will reverse the colors, so black becomes white, and white/gray becomes black.

You can see there are some places that are black, so I use the Background Eraser (still in Negative Image View) to remove these areas. I can also see little gray specs that are in the middle of areas and I erase these too. This image worked really well, and there were only a few black areas. Sometimes I do this, and all the white lines are edged in black, and yes, I am very anal, and I erase them all pixel, by pixel. I also can see, I forgot to use the Flood Fill on Brer Bear's eyebrow, so when I go back to the regular view (select Negative Image a second time) I will refill it in.

Sometimes using Flood Fill I end up with pixels colored in that I don't want, so then I will use the regular Eraser to clean up those extra pixels, making sure lines are smooth, etc.

When that's all done I have a clean image

 

[hopemax]

Layering

I should have mentioned earlier. When using PSP or another program that does layers, you need to make sure the image is saved in the proper format to preserve the layers. So no jpegs or gifs. On PSP, the file is a .pspimage extension. This is also good, because with jpegs there are issues with the compression, so after cleaning up your image and saving and reopening, you might find that artifacts are reintroduced into the image and then you end up with those gray pixels around the image again.

Back to Brer Bear. What we want to do is create a layer for each color we need to print to make our Brer Bear. I will need a layer for the: raft, rope, coat, bear body, muzzle, eyes/tooth, and hat. I also like to keep a layer that is the complete image. So I will use the Duplicate option under the Layer properties. Repeating until I have 7 layers and my base.

On the closeup, you can see the little eyeball. That toggles the visibility for that layer, so I can make only the hat layer visible, or only the body visible.

Then on each layer, I use the Eraser to erase everything I don't want. It's hard to print lines that you can see on black paper, so I make sure the black areas are filled in. And on this muzzle layer, I decided I don't want to use cardstock for inside of his mouth, so I filled it in on this layer instead.

It's really only important to delete the lines for stuff that would appear on a lower layer. If you know you will be putting additional layers on top of the one you are working on, it's sometimes helpful to leave all the extra lines there, because then they serve as guides on where to place the other layers. So for the Body Layer, I didn't delete the coat or hat areas.

Once you finish all the layers, Save your work!

Cropping and Printing

From this point on, it's best if asked to resave, you select NO. Otherwise you might end up damaging your image.

Now, I'm ready to print my individual pieces. I make sure the layer I want printed is visible, and all other layers are invisible. I crop the image to just the area I need. This affects the size of all other layers, so if you save now, you will only have partial layers for everything else.

Then I can go to the Print Layout and make it print how ever many I need. In this case 6.

Repeat for all the layers, and you are done. Sometimes, I use white as my base, and attach everything on top. Other times, I pick the largest color of the image and use that. So if you remember previous paper piecings, Sally was printed on Blue, Lightening McQueen on red, etc. Brer Bear, I might use the color of the raft as the base, since it is the bottom layer.

 

[PrincessNancy96]

This thread should be stickied into the techniques faq somehow! GREAT instructions.

It's in there...

 

[chiefdragon]

My goodness you both made this look so easy. I am thinking this what I might be able to do with Mary Poppins Penquins for the Character Swap....I was really wondering how to do this and Jo Jo and I think you both have answered my question and worry. Thanks so much

 

[Macca1111]

That's great! The only paper piecing I have done were little Disney kits that I found at the LSS - it was obvious to me as I started to put them together how easy this must be when I realized the images were all from a coloring book I own, but I didn't know how to go about getting all those little pieces printed. Voila! Awesome, thanks so much for sharing!