The below links might be useful:

Orange:

http://orange3-associate.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Phyton modules:

http://www.kdnuggets.com/2012/11/best-python-modules-for-data-mining.html

Why to use association rule mining for feature extraction. It will be computationally expensive and needs laborious work. There are number of approaches for the feature extraction which performed well. I suggest to go through the following paper of mine specially focused on such approaches.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10462-016-9472-z

Association rule mining can make your task more complex.   

Better to use PERL for mining association rule, Because PERL is specifically designed for manipulation of text.