Kaffe Fassett: The Power of Pattern Exhibition

Yesterday I went to the “Kaffe Fassett: The Power of Pattern” exhibition at the Fashion Textile Museum.

There were some amazing quilts there, like this stunning rhino quilt named “Tickled Pink” by Susan Carlston.

I have several prints in my portfolio specifically designed for fabric.

However, sewing is not really my thing, let alone quilting.

Even though what was on display is probably not representative of the typical quilt, those beautiful artworks were inspiring in terms of scale and what to focus on when designing quilt fabric.

Another amazing artist I discovered was Sophie Standing. The level of intricate detail was unbelievable, I can’t even imagine the amount of work needed to produce it. Apparently, her pieces can contain as much as 3000 metres of thread!

My absolute favourite piece from the exhibition was “Levitate” by Danny Amazonas. The colours were spectacular and the whole piece was just dreamy.

As a surface designer, the most interesting part were of course the photos of the original repeats. Some of them had annotations like “check the repeat”, or tweaks to the colourways. All Kaffe Fasset studio fabrics are hand-painted, which made me reconsider my frustration with Adobe Illustrator whenever a repeat or a colourway doesn’t work on the first try. At least, I can change colours with a few clicks (bless the recolour tool)!

At the same time, seeing the whole hand-painted repeat was impactful. Even when I hand-paint (which I am recently trying to experiment more with in my sketchbook), I do it with scanning and digital editing in mind, so it’s usually individual motifs, often separated by layers. I’d like to experiment more with bigger groupings of motifs in the future.

Who knows, maybe it could be the subject for my next art challenge…

If you are in the area before the 12th of March, definitely check the exhibition out!