A quilting friend told me she sets her stitch length to 1.5 when paper piecing. The paper tears off much easier. I used the M*QC 10" squares for piecing my string quilt. A suggestion: Don't trim your blocks to the edges of the paper (like Jenny does in the tutorial). Use a ruler to square your blocks so they all will be the same size. Sorry, no grandkids in CO to tear off my papers. It really doesn't take that long. Just be careful to not stretch the stitches or your fabric. I've never used muslin, just the paper squares. JCY