What does the new technology bring to the table?

I recently read an article touting the health benefits of quilting. A team of researchers from the University of Glasgow found the contemplative centeredness of crafts like quilting results in improved well-being in ways that outdoor activities do not. Moreover, creativity can blossom in a climate where it may be suppressed.

I recently spent a week at Rancho La Puerta in Baja California, a splendid spa where every sort of exercise is encouraged. During my three-mile morning hike up the hills I overheard several professional women, on retreat from their stressful day jobs, talking about their kids. From the sound of it, most teenagers are preoccupied with either sports or academics. I never once heard these physically fit mums, in the many conversations I eavesdropped on, ever once mention the arts. Returning to London I wandered the streets and found every young person I came across on the phone or furiously focused on a little black object in their hands as they walked. I began to wonder what this growing preoccupation with these techno toys will have on creativity and  the arts. Do the young have the encouragement they need to develop a possibly hidden flair to be creative? Or is their potential dissipated by all the time and energy spent on high-tech communications and sport?

My assistant Katy broke into these musings, alerting me with great enthusiasm to a student fashion show she was watching on her iPad, the very technology I was questioning. A Chinese fashion designer, Momo Wang, from London’s St. Martin’s College was using patchwork and other crafts to create witty and texturally gorgeous outfits. The imagination displayed in the clothing posted online is a testament to the positive possibilities of technology. She brings so many worlds together: patchwork, embroidery, artistic choice of colour, texture, surreal use of the unexpected, to name just a few. She’s inspired the use of vintage crafts, creating a fresh use of material. There is such intriguing complexity in her designs that she leaves viewers wanting to see more deeply into each outfit. Everyone in the office was totally lit up by this student’s work and emboldened to try richer more chancy mixtures of aesthetics in our own creations.

I realize quite a few young designers in today’s fashion world employ the craft of patchwork and quilting in their outfits. So perhaps my old-fogey reaction to technology is proving to be wrong footed. The very technology I’ve objected to may bring critical attention to all kinds of crafts, which in turn may be used in fresh ways by a new generation. I’m sure all who behold these fashions will think about trying some sort of patchwork for themselves!

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Field Notes: Kaffe Fassett

To the women who inspired us, and taught us to sew

I’ve always felt proud of my mother for her vision. When my family moved to Big Sur in northern California in the 1940s she created an amazing restaurant and shop in Bobcat Country, up a single winding road with no electricity. Recently, I experienced the shock of seeing my mother, Lolly, through the eyes of my niece, Nani Steele, with the publication of a memoir of the family business.

I was raised in the country and it fell to my mother to inspire us, her five children, to use our time well. When not cutting wood, filling kerosene lampsand scraping candle wax from most surfaces, we were encouraged to paint, to make things like puppets, or knit, or sew clothes. I didn’t actually get into knitting then, but it fascinated me that a long piece of yarn could be made into so many useful shapes. Mom knitted huge ponchos when they were fashionable the first time, in the 1970s. Seeing my mother as a young woman in Nani’s My Nepenthe (Andrews McMeel Publishing), how she took in and inspired many lost souls in her lifetime brought me to tears. She organized big sewing rooms, tapping the creativity of others to make things for our family shop.

Inspired to Sew

I see the ways she inspired me as well. In the early 90s I was on television and I asked the viewers to send me little needlepoint pictures for a large needlepoint piece I was making about Britain called “Count Your Blessings,” launched on the BBC television. One woman sent a picture of her Gran with an inscription: “To my grandmother who taught me to sew.” Seeing those words stitched in letters alongside an image of a little woman in a coat and handbag really moved me. With so many of you working mothers in this generation, I do hope you find time to teach basic sewing skills to your kids. I can think of no more useful thing to do for somebody than to offer them the tools and skills that could unlock their creativity and make them happy to be in their own company.

As I sit reading about my own childhood and my amazing mother I’m reminded of all she accomplished. I’m thankful for the way she got me to read, to appreciate art and beauty around me, and to use my hands. I feel a big wave of gratitude to my niece for honoring my mother and our family legacy in such a gorgeously illustrated book.

Kaffe Fassett

Field Notes: Kaffe Fassett

Lately, I’ve written about how quilts influenced the geometry and color of my knitwear designs. Now, I’d like to pay homage to another powerful source of ideas for fabric designs, the world of Oriental carpets.

Carpets have always been part of my life since I was a small boy. My mother used exotic textiles to give a room warmth and color. When I first

moved to London in 1964, I saw how a friend draped his small apartment with gorgeous Oriental rugs and embroideries. The overlapping richness gave everyone who visited a pleasant rush. The maroons, reds and ochres of those weaves were already appealing but their motifs came to fascinate me even more. I used to visit and sketch regularly the largescale Orientals at the Victoria and Albert Museum to use in knitting designs. When I was setting up my London house I got to know all the less expensive rug dealers in the flea markets and collected quite a few good, if worn, carpets to create a cozy colorful home.

Stylized Flowers and Circles

The entire collection of designs for my newest patchwork fabrics was inspired by carpets. When I cut up prints for patchwork they are often more effective if I style them in a similar way. The flat primitive rendition of flowers I found in Middle Eastern carpets is just the ticket when it comes to playing with segments of pattern cut and reassembled.
One example is “Persian Vase,” a small scale, dot-like fabric with a fountain of tiny circular blooms cascading from long stems in a small vase. “Suzani” is another: rows of bold circles, medium in scale, with different centers on each one. “Sprays,” probably the most directly influenced by carpet designs, shows big circular blooms on staggered stems. I love playing with different scales of circles in my quilts and this new collection will be a rich addition to my other round motif fabrics.

Kaffe Fassett

Field Notes:  Kaffe Fassett

When I sit down to paint my textile designs, I start to dream about the sort of quilts I’d create and match colours to the mood. Since I love passionate reds, I usually start with that end of the spectrum then move on to deep, luminous blues and purples. From there I shift to browns, ambers, ochres I admire in marquetry and antique wood tones. After I cover these staples of my palette, my mind gravitates to the soft pastel world of the antique embroideries, China pots, patchworks and beaded bags I buy for inspiration to paint in my still lifes. Frosted, faded pinks, lavenders, blues, and mint greens give me a thrill every time I see them combined. I make a palette of those tones in big blousy florals, small geometrics, and polka dots. By painting out six colourways for each of the fabrics I design, I offer patchworkers a virtual paint box of colours to work with. How fulfilling it is to see my dream palette come to life, and then to piece these designs together to create a quilt like this Sweet Sixteen Patches pattern for QUILT magazine.

Floral Inspiration

I found inspiration for Sweet Sixteen Patches in a book of old chintz quilts. My favorites were those quilts that used one large-scale print as a base to

float sixteen patches on. For my quilt design I wanted to sew something very basic, leaving the colour and scale of each pattern to reveal its own mood and mystery. I chose large-scale florals as my ground squares; and sixteen patches made up of my polka dots, a new button print, and classic guinea flower and paperweight prints in contrasting pastels. For the border I chose a traditional print in mint and pink reminiscent of French hotel wallpaper or a book cover, one of my favourites from my new collection. I often revisit this pa

stel territory to paint still lifes. My dream setting for Sweet Sixteen Patches would be an old-fashioned room with soft wallpaper, porcelains of flowery pastels, and perhaps an embroidered silk shawl over a couch!

Kaffe Fassett

Field Notes: Kaffe Fassett

I came into quilting in awe of the splendid play of geometry that old quilts revealed. The dazzling array of patterned cloth in individual color palettes quite took my breath away. I saw these scrappy statements as tapestries or paintings, so the last thing that concerned me was how carefully or otherwise they were sewn together.

Imagine my shock when I would see professional quilt makers hold a quilt I admired—a glorious arrangement of colored cloth—close to their keen eyes to judge the evenness of the stitches. Once they ascertained whether those were neat enough to pass their exacting standards they would walk away satisfied, or more often than not disappointed at the low level of craftsmanship. Standing back to see the whole effect didn’t seem of importance to them.

Technique vs. Spontaneous Beauty

Coming from the world of art, technique is very low on my list of concerns in a work. The all-over color composition is highest. If that is life enhancing, I am very forgiving of the methods employed to produce that image.

I flipped out when I encountered my first Gee’s Bend exhibit at the Museum of Art in Houston. Here were quilts made by the humblest families in America, out of work clothes, curtains, and cheap scraps of home furnishing fabrics, and sewn together with apparent abandon. This spontaneous use of traditional patchwork blocks gave such a vital life to the form that it attracted the greatest artists of our day to become enthusiastic about the Gee’s Bend world.

Now, I don’t want to offend the preachers of high standards in quilt construction. The craft world needs those of us who make quilts to strive to be as good as we can in order to communicate to others our passions in life. Making a great quilt is just another way to tell the universe how ecstatic we are about the beauty of life.

On my own hand-sewn quilts I often use primitive running stitches for quilting, adding what I see as vigor to the piece. The fact that my knit designs are beautifully knitted for me with all the ends tucked in neatly really thrills me. After all, if we pour our souls into a great complex work we want it to hold together for people to enjoy in the future.

Actually learning good techniques can also be a stimulus to creative ideas. There is great comfort in doing a neat row of stitches. I often find my most contented moments are stitching down bindings on finished quilts. I only get worried when this neatness becomes the most important aspect of a work, to the exclusion of all possible spontaneous beauty.

Kaffe Fassett

Field Notes: Kaffe Fassett

My first motivation to design fabrics for patchwork arose from my delight in an antique quilt I saw in Wales featuring big roses on home furnishing fabrics. I started noticing how fond the British were of using floral chintz prints in their charming country houses. The unapologetic floweriness appealed to me, and some 20 years later, when I started designing quilts, I longed to capture that look.

A Perfect Partnership

One contemporary designer’s work in particular, Philip Jacobs, had always caught my eye. A well-known designer in the United Kingdom, Philip produces designs for furnishings, wallpaper, and quilting fabric both in the UK and the United States. I learned he lived in a country farmhouse and had a huge barn full of collected documents—scraps of wallpaper and fragments of printed fabrics—of vintage French and English prints for inspiration.

One day I paid him a visit. As we dined on a picnic lunch in Philip’s studio, I looked around. The space housed a surprising assortment of Tibetan art and huge dinosaur bones, two of this amazing artist’s passions. What a contrast from the beautiful English chintzes he designs! Colorful Buddhas and religious Tibetan paintings decorated the walls, and the floors were strewn with dinosaur vertebrae and foot bones. Philip combs the British beaches for bones and London salerooms for the Tibetan art. Huge Oriental bowls are bursting with rolls of his printed textiles to add to the exotic mix.

During that visit, I commissioned Philip to do a fabric collection for Westminster Fibers. After choosing from many possible documents and adjusting them to create floral motifs that suited our patchwork needs, I was delighted to hear he wasn’t that interested in defining colorways for his patterns. I chose colors for his designs that coordinated with my collections so that our fabrics could be used together easily.

As our collections grow year by year, I am delighted to see the patchwork shops and their customers enthusiastically agreeing with my decision to add Philip’s designs. His big florals mix well with my contemporary ones and bring that old world flair and panache to our fabric palette.

Kaffe Fassett

An Upscale Quilt

Field Notes: Kaffe Fassett

Having made a name of sorts in many different mediums, I’m often asked by audience members around the world what I’d like to try next. “Scale” is always my answer: I envision covering a large building in tiles, mosaic, or fabric.

Last November I found myself in Friesland, Holland, at a launching ceremony of what must rank among the world’s biggest patchwork quilts. This project was initiated by Henk and Marja Schenk, owners of the Quilt Kabinet fabric shop outside the charming old city of Leeuwarden. Marja had the inspired idea to create a four-story-tall patchwork to cover the front of a handsome 450-year-old leaning tower. My assistant Brandon and I were invited to attend the launch, teach workshops, and give lectures to celebrate a comprehensive exhibition of quilting at the Fries Museum (www.friesmuseum.nl).

A Vision Unveiled

A crowd gathered on the damp grey morning to watch the mammoth quilt (made by 350 sewers) unroll and glide gently up the tower, lifted by a giant crane.

I’d heard about the project for over a year and envisioned a communal project that made up in spirit what it would surely lack in taste and style.

Imagine my profound delight as a very handsome, very together arrangement of squares appeared in a palette that toned beautifully with the old brickwork of the tower. Then it really hit me. Not only was it made entirely of my fabrics, but also was the layout of my first quilt, Rosy. Suddenly it was the most spectacular celebration of all the years I’ve been designing patchwork and fabrics. Tears sprang to my eyes and I hugged the women who inspired and brought about this wondrous happening to encourage sewers throughout the world. My dream of scale was before my eyes.

Good Omens

Isn’t it amazing how a seemingly random creative inspiration can foreshadow events to come?

My first brush with patchwork, which occurred while I was primarily painting for a living, came back full circle to lure me into the quilting world several years later. Many years ago, I was hired to paint a mural in a newly decorated dining room and bathroom. It was a joy to walk to work through my developing neighborhood every day. I particularly enjoyed passing a small antique shop with a stunning window display. An old patchwork quilt comprised of simple squares hung down, serving as a backdrop. Its jade, turquoise, soft dusty pink and cream palette was echoed by an arrangement of vintage kitchen utensils and containers of the same colors in the foreground.

I was so impressed that I passed a note under the door saying, “Whoever put this window together is a born painter; I’d love to do a still life of everything here. If interested, call me.” The very next night a lovely English voice on the phone said, “What a wizard idea! Come to dinner.” After our meal, she handed me a box containing everything I had seen in the window. The trusting gesture spurred me to paint my best in record time. Two weeks later I had a large still life to show, and a newfound appreciation for squares and the designs they make.

Painted Inspiration Reappears

Jumping forward a few years, my yarn representative and friend Liza Lucy tried to convince me to expand beyond the needlework world into patchwork. I resisted, saying how much I had on my plate with knitting, needlepoint and painting. One day, a stranger offered Liza one of my paintings. Upon hearing it contained a patchwork quilt, she bought it on the spot, seeing it as a clear omen that we would work together.

The painting hangs in her living room and has inspired many patchwork versions of that arrangement of squares that caught my eye so long ago. Liza noticed that the painting shows a very fanciful interpretation of the quilt’s sixteen-patch design. As I write this I’m just finishing a book on the basic geometry of quilts, which opens with a chapter on squares. Even after writing fourteen books on patchwork, I still find the squares that started it endlessly captivating. Never underestimate where you might find inspiration for a quilt design, much like I did in that antique shop window.

From Knit to Patchwork

Field Notes: Kaffe Fassett