I went to the Kaffe Fassett workshop on Tuesday at the City Quilter. Many of the quilts from his latest book, Simple Shapes Spectacular Quilts were hanging throughout the shop.
I know I’ve never been able to take a picture of my own quilts that do them justice, but I always wondered if Kaffe’s quilts were enhanced by the professional photographs in exotic locations I’ve seen in his books. But I have to say, in person, even under florescent lights, his quilts are even more spectacular than they appear in a stylized photo shoot.
Bounce, in particular, is spectacular in person. I saw this quilt in his book and I wasn’t drawn to it at all. I admit I was disappointed to when I found out this was the quilt we were going to workshop.
However, once I got to the store and got to see this quilt, I was so excited about the workshop. In this workshop, we didn’t sew a stitch. We simply cut out our fabrics and put them up on design walls and edited our designs with the help of Kaffe.
I loved getting to watch everyone else progress and their stacks of fabric turn into neat little squares on their design walls.
The woman on the left gesturing is Liza Prior Lucy, and I believe she is the one who turns Kaffe’s designs into actual quilting patterns. She is the co-author of his latest book.
I like bright colors and I picked out a wide range of polka dots for border of the quilt, but I was hoping to get some input on which fabric would be a nice center to pull it all together. Kaffe took me shopping in the store and picked out this tennis ball fabric. I am not a huge fan of novelty fabrics and I really had a hard time getting over the tennis ball theme. I put it up on the wall to get an idea of how it would look. Also, see Kaffe on the right in front of his version of this quilt.
I told Kaffe I didn’t think I could do the tennis balls, and he suggested these strawberries instead. I loved them, but I was hoping to NOT make a pink quilt for once. He asked me why one would ever NOT make a pink quilt. I admit, I agree.
After a break, some women in the class decided not to go with the design Kaffe suggested. He gave us a pep talk about how they could always go with their own designs, but for this workshop, to try his designs. “Listen to me and your quilt will be beautiful.” After that, I decided to brave it with the tennis balls. I also kept in mind that we were not sewing the pieces together, so I always had the option to change things.
I do love that bright, neon green color and I thought it would bring together my other prints better than the pink. In this shot I’ve divided up what I believe are my light fabrics (at the top) and my dark fabrics (at the bottom) so I could begin an alternating checkerboard border.
I have never worked with a design wall, so it was really interesting to be able to throw all the fabrics up there at once and really play around with them. I am so hooked on this process.
I added in some of the corners just to get an idea of what the snowballs might look like. I felt really happy with the design at this point.
The best part was getting to see how many different interpretations we all made of the same quilt and how they EACH were so beautiful and inspiring.
This woman chose Japanese prints. I really love the fabric she chose as her background. I think it ties together all the shapes in the quilt so well.
This woman shocked the class at first. How can you design a black and white quit at a Kaffe Fassett workshop? In the end, her quilt was SO much about color. It reminds me of the Wizard of Oz.
Each and every fabric in this quilt is beautiful. I love the color combinations.
The two designs on the left were made by sisters and used mostly Kaffe prints. I think their checkerboards were so successful. We started our designs with just the center pieces, and I was amazed how much the checkerboards changed the whole look of the thing.
This quilt started out as a tremendous pile of scraps and I really could not envision how they would all come together, but lo, they are beautiful.
At the end of the class, we all gathered around and looked at each person’s design and Kaffe offered feedback about what worked and what didn’t work. The quilt on the left will be a wall hanging and is smaller than the ones the rest of the class was designing.
This class was so incredibly inspiring. Picking up a Kaffe Fassett book was one of the reasons I really became excited about being a quilter in the first place. I knew my taste was loud, so I was not prepared to have that loud taste stretched even further by choosing a tennis ball print, but I am so happy that happened. I feel such a new sense of freedom in picking out fabrics now. I can’t wait to get this quilt to size.
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Last week I visited my friend Michelle in Roxbury, Massachusetts. She showed me a quilt her great-grandmother Clara Fougere made.
Clara immigrated from Nova Scotia, but this quilt was found at her home in Medford, MA. Michelle said there were many more where this came from. Clara never bought fabric for her quilts, instead piecing together clothing her family no longer used.
She sewed all the pieces together and quilted it by hand.
I commented to Michelle how Clara’s life must’ve been kind of simple and nice. I mentioned the story about Nellie who lived on a farm and sold vegetables when she created the Around the World Quilt I am replicating. Clara had a different life. She had nine children and worked in a factory in Portland.
She also made chests full of these. I love the beautiful details in the border and the corner of the quilt.
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