I am happy to be able to finally show off my April 2021 project as an Aurifil Artisan in collaboration with Free Spirit Fabrics! Each year that I have been an Artisan we partner with other brands within the quilting industry on occasion to bring you fun projects.
This year for our April project we were sent a bundle of Kaffe Fassett fabrics from Free Spirit Fabrics and challenged with making a project of our own choosing for the month using these fabrics and Aurifil threads. This was my FIRST time ever working with Kaffe fabrics, which is a little surprising! I have always admired them but been a little intimidated by the bright bold colors and designs.
Since we were allowed to supplement from our own stash as well, I decided to use low volume jelly roll strips to create a patchwork background piece. I did some one inch cross hatch quilting on the piece before adding any appliqué pieces to the front.
I used an Orange Peel templates set from Fat Quarter Shop to cut out a mix of petal shapes from the various Kaffe fat quarters, which I had applied Heat n Bond to. After cutting out the shapes I arranged and re-arranged them over a period of a couple days before I decided on the final layout.
I stitched each appliqué shape down with Aurifil 40 wt. in the shade 3817 "Marrakhesh", a beautiful variegated thread that matched perfectly with the shades of the Kaffe fabrics.
Next up it was time to add some decorative stitching with Aurifil 12 wt thread. I used 5 shades from the Glorious Kantha set (also designed by Kaffe Fassett) in various ways including a traditional back stitch, big stitch quilting, and some other embroidery methods. I used shades 2520, 2530, 2860, 1231 and 2725 throughout the pillow cover most in an "echo" quilting sort of way, outlining the appliqué shapes or adding in decorative effects.
This project was really fun to work on. I did things I don't do very often like hand stitching and appliqué. Overall I'm extremely pleased with the finished pillow cover and will definitely be using more Kaffe Fassett fabrics in the future now that I have overcome my fear of what to do with them!
I love it~
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