Hand quilting with Aurifil

The Polaris Quilt Pattern is available in the SHOP

By now, I have so many quilts and cushions that my kids filled a nook with them and called it the “Cozy Corner”. But will that stop me? Of course not! Let’s make that Cozy Corner cozier!

Since I feel it’s been forever since I played with my pattern Polaris, I decided to make a nice big cushion with a single block. As much as I love a big, cozy quilt, making something with just one block of a pattern lets me be as creative and detail-frenzied as I want!

I used soft cotton lawn by Anna Maria Textiles for the feature fabric, and though I picked the print right away, since I wanted to keep that ribbon effect, I needed a solid, and I had a lot of trouble deciding! Too many options! In the end, I narrowed it down to four colors and then had to turn to Instagram, where my followers voted and made the decision for me (thank you!).

That set, I combined these with a speckled Essex linen for the background, giving it a fun visual and textural contrast. This specific Essex linen has speckles of blue, ocher yellow and turquoise that go so well with my selected print for the project.

Once the block was pieced and pristine, it was really showtime! I pulled out my most recent Aurifil goodies: five gorgeous colors from second edition of their 8wt threads!

This new 8wt collection, curated by the super talented Anna Maria Textiles, is called Indelible and has 20 wonderful colors. They are all different from the Aurifil 8wt. previous collection, Evolve.

How well these match with my fabric! That’s no coincidence, either since the print fabric I used is also designed by Anna Maria.

Since I was so closely matching colors, and I was diving into hand-quilting, which is about as far from my specialty as I can get (I live on Illustrator and my trusty sewing machine), I decided to do something I knew I’d love: I wanted to picture rain falling on those printed leaves, colored by the reflection of the foliage. That’s why I tried to balance the thread colors to the prints, and it came out even better than I could have imagined!

The backing is a bright blue that, in my mind, is all that accumulated rain pooling together, held in place by a statement binding (that I liked so much, I added it to the back seam too!)

Now I know I said this was going to be an addition to the Cozy Corner, and while I’m sure it’ll end up there someday, I’m going to have to be selfish and make it the new centerpiece for the couch so I can casually show it off whenever we have company over. Tell me you guys do the same with projects you’re particularly proud of!

Now, did I mention the new collection has 20 colors?! I only used five! If you’re new to 8wt, it’s closer to floss than to quilting weight thread, but it has two stands instead of six, which means you don’t have to tangle yourself up separating your threads, you can just dive right into embroidering! I’ve found them to be really smooth and colorful and they don’t break or shred, so I recommend you give them a shot!

As always, happy quilting!

Hand Quilting With Aurifil 8wt.

The Polaris Quilt Pattern is available in the SHOP