an aurifil afternoon

For me, going to a fabric store is a lot like going to a candy store. It's filled with beautiful treats for those of us who like to stitch, including racks of threads in every hue, weight and finish. And these spools really are like candy. Small and enticing, and oh the colors! Aurifil thread is especially a treat.

And recently I got to take a virtual tour of the candy thread factory.



Alex Veronelli travels the world talking about the thread his company makes, and I was very excited when I heard that he was coming to Sew Generously, just a few minutes from me! I went to his lecture with Becca and Faith, and it was both educational and inspirational.



In the sewing community, Alex is a bit of a celebrity. In keeping with that, I had him sign my Aurifil thread card. I clearly look way too excited about it, but I'm pretty sure we were all have a little chuckle about it.

At any rate, he was so sweet and almost a little shy. Maybe asking for an autograph was too much?



In his lecture, Alex gave us a virtual tour of the Aurifil thread factory, walking through the process of making their thread. It was like an Italian version of the Mister Rogers Picture Picture films. So much goes into making a spool of thread, and it was obvious that this is a company that takes extra care in producing quality thread.




The behind the scenes portion was worth the price of the event, but then we got to see all kinds of samples made with Aurifil sewing threads and embroidery floss.

The piece above was made as color sampler. If you look closely you can see how the artist blended two Aurifloss colors together in between sections stitched with a single color, creating a color wheel. And I really liked the use of lazy daisy stitches as fill.



This is another example of blending floss, and in this case, it makes a gradient. There's also a bit of a gradient created with the number of strands, which is fantastic and something I want to play around with.



Of course there were many quilts in so many styles, and it was amazing to see what people can do with fabric and beautiful threads.



Everyone who came also received an Aurifil tote bag with a few goodies, including a small spool of each of their main thread weights/types. I've already broken into mine and did a little experiment in embroidery with non-embroidery threads, which you can find on About.com.

I seriously enjoyed my Aurifil afternoon, and look forward to more stitching with this premium thread! For another perspective of the day, be sure to check out Becca's post!