All my fabric and sewing supplies that were on order finally made it to my sewing space. Have to say that Joanne’s was the first to arrive–next day! Etsy was a few days later. And Fat Quarter Shop took over a week. No judgement. I just need to work the mailing times into my project line.

While I waited I was working on Foundation Paper Piecing (FPP) butterflies for my “Tell me a Story” daytime quilt. I made the first butterfly in orange fabrics and loved how the color popped against the blue that I’m using for the sky. Now all the butterflies will be orange!

This is a pattern from Lillyella.com, I also used her pattern for the moths on my nighttime quilt and just downloaded a hummingbird that she designed. That pretty might end up in this quilt, too.

I like this method of piecing sections of my quilts because it is very exact. And the points come out nice and pointy. I use Carol Doak’s Foundation Paper usually. This time when I went to print out the first three butterflies, a regular sheet of copy paper got in the mix.

“Cricket” was on the regular paper. I thought, how different can it be? And why waste a piece of paper? I was SO wrong. Should have tossed that paper and printed it out on the good stuff. Right from the start I had problems with the copy paper. I used a small stitch (1.4) but the angles were not as precise. The edges didn’t line up. When I pulled the paper out, the seams ripped, too. I had to do a lot of re-stitching.

And a close up….

After realizing what a difference the correct paper makes, I ordered “Papers for Foundation Piecing” to judge whether it was even better than Carol Doak’s version. I’m always looking for faster, better, and simpler crafty supplies! It might have been a little easier pulling out from back when it was time to finish the blocks but there wasn’t much of a difference. On Amazon the Carol Doak paper was $12.90 and the “Papers for Foundation Piecing” was $14.03. Both have 100 sheets. I won’t need to order foundation paper again for a very long time!

I planned on redoing Cricket with the foundation paper but by then I had made four other butterflies and was a wee bit burnt out on FPP! So, unless I get a burst of motivation, this Cricket will be going into the quilt! I’ll just trim it down to even up the edges!

Happy to have all my new supplies and ready to go!