I took a workshop with Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Mably last week! The project was the Mediterranean Hexagons quilt from the book Kaffe Fassett's Quilts in Morocco, available on Amazon here (affiliate link).
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| Brandon Mably and Rebecca the Rebellious Workshop Student |
I'm going to start with a quick synopsis so those of you who are crunched for time can just skim through the pictures and be done with it:
Everyone loved this workshop except me.
Seriously -- no fault of Kaffe and Brandon whatsoever; they were delightful. I was miserable. I couldn't follow directions. I wasted a lot of money and -- worse! -- I wasted a lot of FABRIC. But Brandon was nice to me, and I learned to read the workshop description first before stampeding to the front of the line to sign up for a class next time. By the way, just because I didn't enjoy the class doesn't mean I wouldn't recommend it to others. If you have a small hoard of fabulous Kaffe Fassett prints in your stash that you just don't know how to use in a quilt, or if you tend to stay in your comfort zone when it comes to color and you want to learn how Kaffe puts his fabulous combinations together, you would LOVE this workshop. Kaffe and Brandon are delightfully entertaining and I swear I was the only person in the room who was feeling stifled.
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| Original Mediterranean Hexagons Quilt from the book, made by Judy Baldwin |
I shouldn't have signed up for this class in the first place, since it was all about learning how to imitate Kaffe Fassett's color and design style. I love his fabric designs, but I'm not really interested in making quilts that look like they were designed by someone else. Also, having worked as an interior designer for 20+ years, I'm used to having to work within a client's parameters as far as how much color and pattern they can live with and which colors they prefer or dislike, but I am NOT used to having anyone walk up while I'm creating a color palette and snatch fabrics right out of my hands or off my design wall... Honestly, what first attracted me to quilting is that I can put whatever crazy prints and colors together that my little heart desires, without needing anyone else's approval before the project can move forward. Quilting for me is about total design freedom -- and yet here I was, in a very restrictive class where I had to design a quilt using the same two shapes as everyone else. Students were instructed to fussy-cut large scale prints from the same color family for their hexagons, and then Kaffe and Brandon helped each student select a wildly different color for their triangle star points that would make their hexagons "glow." The workshop is ideally suited to anyone who admires the glorious mixes of colors and prints in Kaffe's work, but who doesn't feel confident putting those combinations together on their own. Although we all brought lots of fabrics to class, the quilt shop sponsoring the event had also stocked the classroom with bolts of fabric from their store that students could shop from to supplement what they'd brought with them, and those were the fabrics available for Kaffe and Brandon to suggest to students whose fabrics from home weren't wowing them once they were cut up and positioned on the design wall.
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| Kaffe Fassett Explaining to the Class Why He Hates My Project |
Okay, so Kaffe didn't REALLY tell the whole class that he hated my project, but he was definitely frustrated with me for Willfully Failing to Follow Directions. He said my hexagon fabrics were not all the same color family as instructed; rather they were all the same MOOD. And I knew that; every fiber of my being was resisting the conformity of using the same fabrics/colors/design concept as everyone else in the class. When I rooted through my stash to decide which fabrics to bring, I was mostly drawn to some Anna Maria Horner prints that meshed with the Melancholy Autumn vibe I was feeling that day. And whereas most of the students in the Kaffe Fassett workshop were using Kaffe Fassett Collectives fabrics, I deliberately chose different fabrics so my project wouldn't look like everyone else's. However, the fabrics I'd selected for my star points were all VETOED by Kaffe. And then I ran into the dilemma of being halfway through an all-day workshop, with no fabrics that I liked for the star points among what I'd brought from home, yet none of the fabrics lined up in bolts in the classroom was doing it for me, either.
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| Students Working With Kaffe Fabric Prints Had the Most Options for Coordinating Fabrics |
There was nothing in that conference room that looked amazing with my "moody" hexagons -- all of the fabrics that were brought in for the class were too bright and cheerful. So I ended up settling for these ugly dark teal batiks that you see in the photo above... And since they are about the same value as my hexagons, those fabrics (which I had to purchase in class in order to avoid sitting there doing nothing all afternoon) just make the whole think look like a muddy mess. Blech! I agree, Kaffe; my project is hideous -- and the whole exercise of cutting up my favorite fabrics just so I can put them up and the wall and THEN decide if I like how it looks? That feels like the DARK AGES to me!!! Never again!! You guys, I butchered so many fabrics in this workshop that are not even going into a quilt now. What a horrendous waste, especially since some of them are treasured discontinued skus! I wish I'd had a computer in the class loaded with EQ8 quilt design software (affiliate link) so I could audition fabrics like a sensible 21st century quilter, and only start cutting into fabric (or purchasing additional fabric!) once I was 100% certain I was going to love how everything looked together.
The Digital Workshop Do-Over in EQ8
So today, with a little help from fabulous Matt at EQ Tech Support (he walked me through setting up the quilt layout for the hexagons with star points, which only took about 5 minutes), I decided to give myself a Digital Do-Over for the workshop. This is what I came up with:
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| This is the Vibe I Was Going For in Class |
This first version is what I was originally aiming for in class. Kaffe wanted everyone to pick out fabrics for their star points that would "make their hexagons glow," but I wanted to explore what it would look like for my stars to glow and my hexagons to recede instead. And of course, unlike designing a quilt by chopping up actual fabric to audition it on a wall, once I've set up the quilt layout in EQ8 software I can recolor it over and over again as many times as I want, without wasting any fabric in the process. It's a LOT easier to change your mind about a fabric that isn't working with the others when you haven't already chopped your yardage up into Swiss cheese.
So here's my second version, which did use mostly Kaffe Fassett Collective prints:
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| See, I CAN Follow Directions. I Just Choose Not To! |
By the way, these computer renderings are totally to scale, and the fabrics are all to scale as well. I can rotate them and slide them around to simulate "fussy cutting" a particular flower so it's right in the center of my hexagon, as well.
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| Version Three, Also Following Directions |
See? I was able to design two quilts that look like they came right out of a Kaffe Fassett book. But I still like my version with the gold stars better, even if no one else does!
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| Still My Favorite |
If I was actually going to make any of these quilts, I'd have to jazz up some of those hexagons, maybe with some appliqué in some of them or some pieced hexagons made from stripes. I can actually plop any pieced block design inside my hexagon with EQ8, so I could put stars within stars... The possibilities are limitless.
Anyway, I'm done with classes and workshops for awhile. I've got too much of a backlog of unfinished projects, too many ideas swirling around in my own mind, and too many techniques that need to be practiced until they are developed and solidified into skills.
I'll probably write up an EQ8 tutorial within the next two days, showing how to draw this quilt layout in the software, just for my own future reference so I don't forget, but I've got some other work to get caught up with first.
Meanwhile, I'm linking up with:
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