Quilter's Envy

As much as I love color, I can't ever imagine the day when I will be able to combine colors in a way that is as exceptional as the way Kaffe Fassett does it.

Visit From The Master
Liza and her husband brought Kaffe over last night, with their friend Meg (who I have met once before...very nice woman). We served esspresso, tea,and apple pie (Thaddeus makes a great pie, although he was a little disappointed that the humidity made his crust a little less perfect than usual...it was still exceptional).

The purpose of the visit was so I could show my quilt top to Kaffe, so we did.




Kaffe made some very nice comments about the quilt, noting the overall consistency of color depth and how nice the quilt made the border fabric look (one of his nicest fabrics currently available in my opinion).

As much as I enjoyed having him encourage my work, I found much greater encouragement from looking at a small sampler quilt he had with him that made use of a number of his newest fabrics. The quilt was quite simple, but the colors were exquisite. I would have shown a picture if the fabrics were available, but they're not being sold yet.

Kaffe Gossip
For those of you who know Kaffe, you know that he is a very gracious and personable man (we got along famously as a result). He regaled us with stories about his "magnificent cock" and told us the meaning of the word "fanny" in the U.K.. All in all, it was a wonderful evening.

But then he let it slip that he will be decorating the Christmas tree at the Victoria and Albert Museum this year. A great honor and an excellent choice by the folks at the museum who make such decisions.

Other Quilting News
I decided I better get the binding fabric cut and sew up the backing so that I can send this thing off to get it quilted. I thought the binding would be easy, but it was, by far, the biggest pain in the ass so far associated with the quilt.

For non-quilters, here are instructions on cutting binding fabric.

Just picture doing it with fabric about the size of a small sheet.

Here is what mine looked like at the point where I had finished marking the 2.25" cutting lines.




You can just barely see the white lines that I carefully measured and marked for cutting.

I did end up finishing the binding, but I'll have to do the backing next weekend, if I have any time after Rhinebeck and Franklin, etc.

Readers' Comments/Questions
Regarding Kaffe's visit, Geraldine asks, "And, what precisely are you going to feed him? And why only dessert? Is the bulldozer coming through right after the mains or what? How about the wine?"

As you read, we fed him apple pie, and we only did dessert because his available time was very limited (most people have no idea how grueling it is to travel and do publicity). Liza's house is being added onto, and her kitchen is mess of construction. Otherwise, we probably would have just gone to her house to meet up with Kaffe.

And as for wine, good Muslims like Thaddeus and I don't drink or serve alcohol.

Both Emma and Anne mention knitting magazines and my reviews of them

Thank you both for your comments. I've decided that I won't be reviewing magazines anymore. It takes too much time, and the one-sentence critiques of sweaters aren't very useful to either the readers or the designers.