Kaffe 2014 - The Colourful World of Kaffe Fassett

A visit to the American Museum in Britain was top of my list of things to do during a visit to Bath last week.  Kaffe Fassett, the world renowned knitwear and textile designer, has a wonderful exhibition there that showcases the importance that colour has had throughout his career.   I have been a fan of his for many years and in fact the first quilt that I made was a Kaffe Fassett design.

This mock up of his studio is a fabulous riot of colour and includes examples of Kaffe's many skills, including painting, needlework, knitting and fabric design. 

Cabbages are everywhere is the display of some of his paintings, needlework and fabric designs in the green room.

The knitwear and needlework on display are beautiful however it was the quilts that really caught my attention.  They are often based on traditional block patterns, such as this mesmerising version of a log cabin design.  

Or this beautiful diamond quilt...

...with machine quilting used to highlight the flowers.

This fabulous hand quilted stripy quilt was one of my favourites. 

The designs may be based on traditional block patterns however there is nothing traditional about the colour combinations.  Kaffe's designs are vibrant, bright and saturated with colour.  "If in doubt, add another twenty colours" is my favourite Kaffe motto and one that he clearly lives by.  This exhibition is truly inspirational and is a wonderful example of how we can all add more colour to our lives.

To find out more about the exhibition there is an excellent short video and additional information on the museum website.  The exhibition runs until 2 November.

Look what I won...

Last week I received a wonderful surprise.  An email to say that I had won a fabulous Posie cushion kit from The Village Haberdashery!  

The kit was designed exclusively for them by Pat Bravo and features lovely fabrics from the Dreamin' Vintage fabric range.   They have even cut the fabric into the correct sized strips so no need for rotary cutters or struggles with scissors.   Just the fun of sewing.

I am really looking forward to making up the cushion and have already picked out the perfect spot for it.  

Thanks so much to Annie, Caroline, Theresa and especially Harvey (what a star!) for picking my name out of the hat.  You really made my day.

Layer Cake quilt

Recently I have been experimenting with some of the many pre-cut fabrics available.  Moda is the king of pre-cuts and my latest quilt is made from one of their layer cake fabric collections.  

Layer cakes comprise 10 inch squares of fabric cut from one fabric collection with 42 fabric squares in each pack.  They are a great way to try an overall collection as there is at least one square of each of the designs with multiple squares of many of the plain or small patterned fabrics.  I chose to use this one called Bluebird Park by Kate and Birdie Paper Co. which features whimsical designs of bicycles, rabbits and birds.

One downside with pre-cuts is that you may find that a favourite image on the larger designs has been cut through the middle.   I find this the most frustrating aspect as it is these designs that I find myself itching to fussy cut to pick out a particular part of the design.  However this is a minor quibble.

Before cutting, I squared up each fabric swatch to ensure that it was 10 inches square.  It is probably not really necessary to do this however I find it helps ensure accuracy when cutting and sewing the blocks.  Initially I had planned to use the layout for the Basic Math quilt on the Moda Bakeshop and cut my squares accordingly.

But then I changed my mind, mainly because I couldn't decide which fabrics to leave out (the Basic Math quilt only uses 40 fabric squares), and decided on a variation of what I have since found out is called Disappearing Nine Patch.  Basically the original layer cake square is reassembled with different fabrics in each of the four positions and then neighbouring blocks are rotated.  

After much fiddling about with the layout, the quilt top is now finished and ready to go to the long arm quilter.