Saturday is Moda Fabric’s “Sew a Jelly Roll” day as part of September being “National Sewing Month”. And I would really like to do just that and start a Sunny Day Supply quilt. But not doing it, nor am I stitching up an Autumn quilt, or a quilt with Mod cats, or my annual Christmas quilt.

But NO, I have two quilts that still need finished and I WILL finish them. I WILL NOT START ANOTHER until these are finished. Really. I mean it.

The first WIP (work in progress) is the “Tell Me a Story –Nighttime”. It’s almost finished. I need to add borders then do the whole quilting thing.

The second is the “Tell Me A Story—Daytime”. I can’t finish the nighttime quilt until I figure out the final size for the daytime version. I want them to both be the same size and I’m not quite sure how the second quilt will turn out yet.

I love love love foundation paper piecing. It appeals to my need for order. The pieces usually just fit so nicely together. I haven’t posted anything about FPP since I made these butterflies back in June for the daytime quilt. The free pattern is from Lilyella.com

They turned out pretty good. But I wasn’t real happy with the obvious stitches on the butterfly parts. For example….

I know. You probably can’t see them. But they are glaring to me! I did some research and stumbled across Coffee Ring Studio that had a post about Foundation Paper Piecing. If you enjoy doing FPP, I highly recommend reading the post. One of her tips was to use 80 wt. thread because it is thinner and the stitches are not as noticeable. I usually use cotton 50 wt. Aurifil thread for all of my quilting so of course, I had to order some 80 wt. Aurifil thread just so I could have hidden stitches, too. The higher the thread number, the thinner the thread. And in theory, I figured this would be amazing.

The first pattern I tried with the new thread was the sun. (I do not remember where I downloaded it from. But it was free.) I enlarged the pattern quite a bit so it would work in the daytime quilt. Then I started using my new threads and realized that I had to change the bobbin and top thread every time I needed to change the fabric color. Ha! I’m a perfectionist to a certain degree, but really? For this piece, I changed the top thread to either yellow or blue as needed but left the bobbin with a neutral off white.

I can still see the threads. Not as much.

Then I made the hummingbird, also a free pattern from LillyElla.com.

These pieces are really tiny so the stitches showed up quite a bit. I should have taken the time and changed out the colors.

Come on, I know you can see those stitches! But. When this whole quilt is finished, washed and dried, and hung, no one will notice. Not even me.

Here’s all the FPP pieces, thus far.

And the Tell Me a Story — Daytime quilt on the design wall.

There will be at least one more rabbit, maybe another hummingbird, plus flowers. Lots of flowers. And everything will be moved around several times before the final layout.

I don’t regret buying the 80 wt. thread since I will continue working with it on FPP plus will find other uses for it. And the colors are so pretty!

Looking forward to how this quilt turns out!