I learned to sew at the age of 12. My mother took me to Singers' summer sewing classes. I have never had a better time, and I have never been the same since. As I progressed, I made everything from lined wool suits to jeans to underwear (but do take my wise advice, underwear is better purchased than made). Indeed, I was rarely seen without a tape measure hanging around my neck.

  I grew up, though, to become a Medical Records Administrator, very practical, very dull, very unrelated to my master's degree in history or to my favorite hobby of sewing. But then along came marriage, and oh-my-goodness-a-baby-changes-everything. My plans were to go back to work when babies went off to school, but life intervened. A home-based business using my sewing skills came to my rescue. I made and repaired doll clothes. In my "spare time," mostly at odd moments stolen between the math tutoring and the potato mashing, I developed my only passion outside my family and my cat: quilting.

  Quilting is the best of sewing. It doesn't have to fit, and it can never make you look fat. (I still mourn over the perfectly executed, striped linen suit that was, shall we say, less than flattering.)

  I started competition quilting. There is nothing like the thrill of having your quilts accepted into national quilt shows, ribbon won or not. My quilts have been shown from coast to coast (juried into The Pacific International Quilt Festival, Quilt Odyssey, The Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza, AQS's Annual Quilt Show and Contest, AQS's American Sewing Exposition, Michigan's American Sewing Exposition, and The Minnesota Quilters Annual Show and Conference). I have won my fair share of ribbons.

  My quilts were largely appliqué, semi-artsy, and generally nostalgic (1950's diner, vintage Barbie dolls, 1940's New Yorker magazine cover). Each had just a bit of piecing thrown in for contrast.

  It was in the making of a pieced border for one of my art quilts that I fumbled into Flip-Flop Paper Piecing. I was constructing a block featuring a plaid fabric. Because I am nothing if not compulsive, I wanted that plaid to look continuous across the block, to be perfectly matched. And yet, I was tired just thinking of fussy cutting each piece and sewing each so precisely that the plaid would appear undisturbed, though actually broken by other non-plaid pieces in the block.

  Suddenly I thought, why not just plop the plaid fabric down on a printed paper foundation. Then insert the other non-plaid fabrics by sewing them from both sides of the foundation! The plaid would look continuous because it would be continuous, and it would be precise because it would be foundation pieced on a printed foundation. By golly, I was on to something here!

  Once I performed that first basic Work-Alternately-On-Both-Sides-Of-the-Foundation maneuver, my mind was flooded with one variation after another of what has come to be called Flip-Flop Paper Piecing (so named because the foundation is flipped back & forth, back & forth, flip flop, flip flop, as seams are sewn first on one side of the foundation, and then the other).

  As I worked with the technique, I discovered hundreds, even thousands, of blocks could be pieced, each on its own undivided paper foundation. My greatest inspiration came one night, when half-asleep, dreaming of, what else, quilting, I sprang up to consciousness with the realization I could piece an 8-pointed Lemoyne Star, Flip-Flop-style. And once you have a Lemoyne Star, a Mariner's Compass is not far behind.

  I developed 13 maneuvers in my piecing system, and submitted them to C&T Publishing, who, bless their little hearts, decided they'd take me in and publish my book. Now anyone can learn to Flip-Flop Paper Piece. Precision sewing no longer requires either careful cutting or meticulous stitching (that elusive "accurate" 1/4" seam). Nor does it demand constant measuring, and seam ripping, and resewing as the block is constructed. A little Flip-Flop maneuver here and there will produce precision, painlessly.

  And the really lovely thing is that Flip-Flop Paper Piecing is neither "artsy" nor "traditional." The final product can be an innovative swirl of distorted blocks, a pieced landscape, or a reproduction of an antique masterpiece. It's all up to you.

Flip-Flop Paper Piecing is a technique with the accuracy of traditional foundation piecing but with a range as limitless as our imaginations: There are Flip-Flop circles & Flip-Flop borders, Flip-Flop trees and Flip-Flop Houses, and a sky full of Flip-Flop stars. I love this technique! I hope you will, too.