Kaffe Fassett

I spent today at a wonderful workshop with Kaffe Fassett.  We were fortunate enough to have him in town, thanks to a collaboration between a local quilt store and knitting store.   The Running Stitch and Wool n' Things brought Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Mably to town for 2 workshops and a lecture.  The quilting workshop was all about colour, working with Kaffe's fabrics and one of the quilts in his "Shots and Stripes" book.

It was a wonderful opportunity to play with colours, and get some pointers and advice direct from both Kaffe and Brandon.  They encouraged us to step outside our comfort areas, and experiment with some bold and interesting colours and textures in the quilts.

I tried just about every background I could get my hands on, from light, to dark, and everything in between. Colours, solids, funky patterns.  So many choices, and so many different looks they brought to the quilts.

In the end, I settled on this background, and these colours.  I had to remove some of my favourites, because they blended too much with the background.  So, when I had some time left before the seminar ended, I took everything down and started again, trying to use my deep colours.  

I put them up, with a lovely grey background, thinking that would avoid the blending.  Kaffe and Brandon both pointed out that the contrast from the light grey to the dark solids was too great, and down they came again.  I ended up with a completely different look than the first time, but still without my deep colours.  I guess they just weren't meant to be.  I even tried using them as background at one point, but after playing with all the textures, they just felt too plain.

Here are some of the lovely combinations that were put together at the seminar.  As Kaffe said several times - it is amazing how many totally different quilts were put together from essentially the same palette of colours.