Kaffe Fassett excitement

I love Kaffe Fassett!  I have been a follower for many years: having been lucky enough to hear him speak,attend a couple of 'Show and Tell' type of evenings when he discussed various pieces of his work, visited two of his exhibitions (in London & York), and bumped into him on several occasions over the years.

As Kaffe is originally a trained artist he views colours and patterns with an artist's eye, so different from my view of the world as I am definitely NOT an artist. I love art and can appreciate it but I cannot draw or paint.  My cousin Paul is an artist - as was his father, my uncle - and years ago I marvelled at how he remembered our living room, how it had been many years ago, now altered and looking quite different.  Paul reminded me that he looks at everything very carefully - he "observes" and those ideas are locked into his head.

So, I was very excited to catch Kaffe's tour of his Gallery at last week's Festival of Quilts.
The collection of quilts comprised quilts and quilt tops that Kaffe has purchased over the years.
He picked out some which had been the inspiration for new quilts which are in his new book
Bold Blooms.
Kaffe walked us around the Gallery, pointing out the things in each quilt which fascinate and excite him and lead him to create a new quilt design.

For instance: Handkerchief Corners Quilt

 

 

 

The aspect of this quilt which jumped out at Kaffe - and his audience once it had been pointed out to us - was the high contrast between the rounds of the log cabin blocks.  The blocks have been assembled in rows to emphasise that: light, then dark as the outer row as you look along the row of blocks.

So, he ran with that idea to create High Contrast Squares:

 

 

 

Floral Octagons was inspired by a French quilt:

 

 

Lattice with Vases is another new quilt from his book "Bold Blooms":

 

Now a few of his collected quilts which particularly appealed to me:

Pastel trip Around the World

 

Pink Spider Web:

 

Satin Hexagon Quilt:

 

and a Close up

 

Pastel Lozenge:

 

 

 

Kaffe drew our attention to this quilt which he essentially sees as "grey" with the amazing small pops

of colour which bring the quilt to life.  He particularly loved the use of small scraps of striped fabrics.

 

And lastly the most amazingly coloured and busy quilt I have ever seen. 

 Kaffe says although he has studied this quilt endless times he still hasn't figured out how the blocks were constructed, what the pattern actually was. And I'm sure I couldn't. He described the quilt as "madness" but so appealing.  I agree, you could look at it for ages and still see new things which you hadn't noticed before.

 

Kaleidoscope: Wacky & obsessive with a swirling palette of colours:

And a Close up. Kaffe pointed out the symmetry of the flowered fabrics, the flowers cut in half and positioned either side of the torpedo-shaped detail:

 

 

Thank you for "Making my Day". Kaffe. I learned a lot.  Check out Kaffe's new book Bold Blooms

which features his glorious flowers so bright and cheerful.