February Aurifil Artisan Challenge: Colour Matching, Contrast & My Butterfly Cushion

For February’s Aurifil Artisan Challenge, I found myself completely immersed in colour.

This month I returned to one of my signature raw edge appliqué designs - a Red Admiral butterfly cushion - but with a renewed focus on thread selection and how much impact it truly has on the finished piece.

As someone who works with layered fabrics, satin stitching, and lots of detailed appliqué, thread isn’t just functional for me - it’s part of the design.

Using the Aurifil Swatch Book

I’ve always loved choosing thread colours, but this month I leaned heavily into using my Aurifil Swatch Book properly....and it made such a difference!

Being able to physically unscrew the swatch book and remove individual pages is incredibly useful. I could take just the orange page or the lilac page and place it directly against my fabric choices. No guessing, just real thread samples against real fabric.

And because they’re actual stitched thread samples (not printed colour cards), what you see is genuinely what you get and each shade lists all the available thread weights for that colour. That’s such a helpful detail when you’re planning texture, layering, or combining different weights in one piece.

Compliment or Contrast?

For this butterfly cushion, I wanted to explore both.

The warm oranges around the wings needed threads that would enhance the richness without overpowering the fabric. Using the swatch book helped me find tones that blended beautifully into the appliqué edges - especially where I used satin stitch to neatly secure my raw edges.

But I didn’t want everything to disappear into the background. In areas like the buddleia-inspired florals and some of the wing markings, I intentionally chose shades that provided subtle contrast. Not jarring - just enough to lift the shapes and give definition.

Thread choice can either soften an edge or make it sing. This month, I played with both!