excited !!!

Last friday I was lucky enough to attend (the) Kaffe Fassett's show and tell "Concentrate on Color". What a treat! I consider myself a big fan, and an owner of many (most) of his books about quilts....

In many ways he was my biggest inspiration to start quilting. I am fascinated by his use of color, even if I can admit, it sometimes can be a bit overwhelming. The use of colors is still one of the biggest attractions in quilting, for me.

I loved this quilt on the top picture, simple squares in a simple diagonal setting.

This second quilt is beautifully sunny in yellow and oranges. It is a class sample for a workshop called Potpourri that was taught the following day.

Kaffe showed a lot of pictures, talked about where he found his inspiration, and showed us a couple of beautiful, colorful quilts. The room was full, and people enjoyed themselves, soaking up inspiration. Very nice talk, followed by a book signing.

I brought one of my favorites,"Passionate Patchwork". Pretty big smile there!

It even gets better! Early next morning 30 women got together for his workshop, and I was one of the lucky ones!!! We all had precut a lot of fabric in large and medium scale flowers of similar contrast into three sizes of squares. Everybody also brought a flannel sheet or piece of batting that got taped to the wall.

Then we arranged the squares according to the pattern, stepped back and started re-arranging, a lot....

It was a lot of fun, and quite intense, too. First step was to eliminate the "jarring breaks" in value. Any squares that is too dark or light has to be removed. A reduction glass is a good tool. Some friendly swapping between fellow quilters is also a good thing, at this stage.

And then I got a friendly comment from (the) Brandon Mably that my quilt looked a bit like a can of chopped tomatoes!!

So, what do you do with a can of chopped tomatoes?

Here comes the brilliant part: the very talented, earlier mentioned, Brandon, makes suggestions for how to broaden your palette. And the wonderful Liz of Kaktus Quilts, who very cleverly arranged this lovely workshop, has a whole stash of fabric waiting to be added to the quilts.

Brandon suggested adding his new fabric "Dapple", in blue and pink, and voila - good things start to happen. If you look closely, you can tell the difference in these to pictures. What do you think?

Working side by side, different palette, same pattern. It was great seeing all the different versions of the same quilt at the end of the day. And see how they all came together, with some expertise advice from Kaffe and Brandon. What a day, what a treat!!

Again, big smile! I loved having the privilege of asking advise from this clever artist. Look at the pretty border treatment he suggested I use: pink Guinea Flowers and deep red Russian Rose, both by KF. Love it!

I also got pretty candid answers and advise from Brandon. Which I actually followed! So, by now I think you all get it, IMHO this guy is a star!!!

And here at last Kaffe is doing the final talk through the 30 quilts to be. We all listened carefully as he commented on each and every quilt. He was quite positive and encouraging in his final review.

I was told I had managed to pull off a rather difficult composition of a narrow color-range without it looking like one, solid piece of fabric (in other words, not a can of chopped tomatoes anymore!)

8 intense hours of concentrating on colors, 2 inspiring and great teachers, 30 hardworking women, a very nice lunch, and some new acquaintances later, we pinned down all the squares, rolled up the flannels and left for home....

Exiting and exhausting. Big smile. If you ever have a chance to do a workshop with these colorful artists, you are in for a treat!!

The big smile is still on my face, I have taped the batting on the wall of the dining room, rearranged the patches some more, and even started sewing ....

To be continued...