A shortcut within a shortcut inside a shortcut...

I discovered years ago, that freezer paper was useful not only for cutting repeat shapes of fiddly applique designs, but also for cutting out small pattern pieces for bags and purses (and it's MAGIC with small bag bits on slippery lining fabrics).

For the uninitiated, freezer paper has a shiny side and a dull side. When you iron the shiny side to the surface of fabric, it sticks. The magic bit is that you can then peel it off and RE-USE the freezer paper quite a few more times. It'll eventually lose its stickiness, but it kicks on for longer than you'd think.
I love a shortcut.... so when faced with the prospect of tracing Tania's HOT FROG pattern pieces onto freezer paper (a fiddly pattern piece always has me reaching for the freezer paper), I thought of yet ANOTHER shortcut.


1. Cut the freezer paper to size and feed it through the inkjet printer (dull side as print side) to print out the downloadable pdf. (If you're using a paper pattern, you could photocopy it onto the freezer paper with a multi-function inkjet printer ). Why hadn't I thought of THAT one before...?

2. Rough-cut around the freezer paper pattern pieces out and iron them onto the fabric.

3. Cut the pieces out.

(I cut the double layer of fabric under the one stuck-on pattern until it all got a bit too much like hard work. I then finished cutting the top layer, repositioned the freezer paper on the other piece and finished cutting the fiddly bit on that one, too... another shortcut).

4. Peel off the pattern pieces and press them onto the next piece of fabric.

5. The pattern piece will stay in place even when you're cutting around little curvy bits.

Now the pattern pieces are all nicely cut out and the freezer paper patterns can be used again for another frog or two.

As you can probably tell by the number of shortcuts I was taking, I really don't have time to make the hot frog at the moment! The cut pieces are now in a ziplock bag with the instructions - all ready for when the wee frog-obsessed girl remembers that she was nagging about making one of these.

...

In case you missed the link at the top of the post, Liesl did a bit of research into Freezer paper a while ago and complied this list of Aussie suppliers. She also wrote a tutorial for freezer paper stencils.