Just playing and a history lesson.............

 

While I was looking for something else I found a bag with 9" Ohio Star blocks in it.  The LeMoyne Star blocks were on top of a pile and they are also 9".  I figured I had to put them up on the design wall and see if they could possibly work together in a quilt.  Then I went to my Kaffe orphan block box and found one Crossed Canoe block and one bordered square (which doesn't work!) and added them.  I would need to make 3 more LeMoyne Star blocks to finish the layout so I have time to think about this.

Now, a little history about Kaffe Fassett fabrics.  I did find the plaid fabrics that I have, all except the one I used on the stripe quilt.  It is a pink and orange plaid and I haven't found it in any of his books up to 2006.

These are the first 5 soft cover books about Kaffe and his designing, starting in 1999.  I found the plaids (he calls them checks) in the one dated 2000.

Fast forward to a 2005 book, I found out when these ikat stripes were made.  I had the red and this purple.  I used the last of the red quite a few years ago.  He calls this pattern Single Ikat Feather. 

In the same book I found info about the Lille Collection.  I first started buying it when online stores had it on sale.  He says in the book that the first 5 designs are used in quilts in this book and they planned on many more prints in the line but there weren't any more produced.  

He said they purchased a book at a textile fair in New York with 19th century French designs.  Kaffe did all of the coloration of the fabric prints.  His name isn't on the selvage.  It just says Lille Collection from Rowan and Westminster.

In that same book he talks about a batik called Confetti that he designed.  It came in 5 colors.  I know I have yardage of the slate and a small piece of the blue in addition to yardage of this one called Tomato.

I need to start using the Lille fabrics and the Confetti batiks.  He chose some good oldies to reproduce for his 85th birthday collection which is supposed to be available in December.

This quilt appeared in a 2001 book and he says that this is one of the few made with just his fabrics.  At that time he was mostly using his own fabrics with other designers' fabrics when he need the color or value.

In 2006 he mentions Philip Jacobs joining his group and also that he was using a lot of fabrics from Carla Miller and Martha Negley and a few from David Wolverson who were also designing for Rowan/Westminster.  I wish I had seen some of Carla Miller's early fabrics because I would have purchased them for my stash.  I have a lot of Martha Negley fabrics and a couple David Wolverson prints.  

After looking through 8 books it looks like he designed a few prints somewhere around 1998-99 and added a few more before 2002 and then he did a lot more designing starting in 2003.  Again, I'm going by which fabrics I see in the quilts in each book as what was available at the publishing date of the books.

And....that's the end of the history lesson.