It is so much fun to quilt a quilt with beautiful color and fabric.  This lovely design is by Virginia Robertson Designs and it uses Kaffe Fassett fabrics with a purple Grunge background.  The challenge for me as a quilter was to make the applique stand out and to let the fabric be the star.

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I used double 80/20 Cotton/Polyester batting because I wanted the applique to pop out of the surface of the quilt.  I stitched in the ditch around the cups, handles and saucers.  I wish I had a magic wand which makes ‘ditching’ easier.  However, the real trick to getting the needle and stitches to go in the tight indentation between applique and background  is concentration and patience.  The next thing is to choose the right thread color.  Before starting to quilt I auditioned several thread colors:There are 4 different threads here–the first two are Superior So Fine, the next is Isacord and the last one is Aurifil.  I didn’t like the first and last because the purple was too red and they were really dark, I thought that they would fight with the maker’s fabric choices. The second one was too light and obvious on all the fabrics, although, if the quilt was going to be about the quilting it would have been a good choice.  The Isacord won–I had some trepidation about using it because I had never used on my longarm, but it worked beautifully and I had zero tension issues.

My next challenge was to find a quilting design which would make the background recede and would give it texture in a relevant way.  I found a coffee bean design by Mike Fountain at Intelligent Quilting.  I think it works really well as a background ‘meander’.

I would love to have one of those cups filled with coffee every morning!!