Many of you will be familiar with templates used to cut fabric and many of the ones we use now are made of acrylic so that we can use them with rotary cutters. Placement templates are used to mark fabric, so the sharpest thing you'll be using with them is a pencil.
Using templates to cut fabric usually results in small, irregularly shaped pieces with stretchy bias edges that can distort as we sew them together. Using templates to mark placement lines allows us to add a slightly oversized piece, stitch first then trim to size. It borrows a little of it's method from foundation paper piecing - without having to piece everything back to front, or tear out foundation papers, phew! - and the stitch-and-flip method we've been using to make snowballed corners.
STEP 9 page 28: To make Mother Goose's beak we will need a 1½” x 2½” bright yellow print piece and 2½” x 6” & 2" x 3" background pieces; the first step is to mark a placement line using the Goose & Feather Template on page 54. You can do this using an LED lightbox - slipped between the pages of your book - or by photocopying/tracing the template and cutting it out. I used a photocopied template a ruler and a water-soluble pen to mark my line.
The next step is to trim the 2" x 3" background piece, offsetting the diagonal cut by ½" from the bottom left-hand corner. The reason we offset the diagonal cut is because it creates the same angle as our marked line, so that - once we've sewn it into place - the edge of the unit will still have straight-of-grain edges. Place the trimmed background piece on the placement line and pin.
Next, stitch ¼" away from the line. If you've been piecing with a scant ¼" seam I'd recommend sewing this seam with a full ¼". Flip the back--ground piece ‘open’ and press well. Check that the tip of the beak is ¼" from the edge of the unit before turning it to the wrong side and trimming, using the base fabric as a guide.
Once the excess has been trimmed you can then trim away the yellow print to reduce bulk. Don't be alarmed that the seam line doesn't quite meet the corner: once it's pieced into your block it will be just perfect :-)