A day with Kaffe

It's been so busy that I haven't had a chance to write about the workshop I went to last week with Kaffe Fassett in Sydney. I can't tell you how excited I was leading up to the day! I particularly admire Kaffe's way with colour and pattern and love his V&A Quilt Book. I had already planned (and started collecting material) to make the Leafy Snowball Quilt as it is in the book for my bed, so when I found out this was the quilt we would be doing for the workshop it was too good to be true.

The day was organised by Material Obsession and it was fantastic. We were told to bring our own fabrics, not to copy Kaffe's, this way we would get the most out of the day. Kaffe and his assistant Brandon helped us with the placement of the squares and our colour choices. The whole day was really confidence boosting, Kaffe kept stressing a "have a go and see what works" approach. I was quite nervous, I'm fairly new to patchwork and stress way too much about whether it'll work or not. So this way of working - we had a flannel sheet up on the wall to put the pieces onto as we went - was quite liberating. It was also fantastic to see all the different fabrics going up around the room and the way they looked in different combinations.

I chose mustards, browns, rust, greens and a bit of purple! (The photos are really bad, they don't show the colours properly, but never mind.) I plan to make the quilt as a throw to go over our brown lounge. I also plan to use my new sewing machine to make the whole thing, so it might actually get finished this year!

This is the gift we all received from Kathy and Sarah at Material Obsession, lovely perle 8 cottons for feature quilting, embroidery needles, a little badge that says "Carpe Quiltem (Seize the Quilt)" v.cute! and smarties that of course are long gone!

The highlight of the day for me was at the end when Kaffe walked us all around the room stopping at each persons quilt and going through the decisions that were made to get to the final design. He said the most wonderful things about everyones' quilts, made us all laugh, kept making suggestions, it was fascinating, inspiring and I thought most generous of Kaffe. Brandon also played an important role during the day and helped me a lot with my design - even if he and Kaffe did contradict each other sometimes - something we all had a laugh about, including them! A great day - just what I needed to give me the confidence to trust my instincts designwise and get on with making things!