Blanket Statements: New Quilts by Kaffe Fassett and Historical Quilts from the Quilt Museum and Gallery, York, England

Blanket Statements: New Quilts by Kaffe Fassett and Historical Quilts from the Quilt Museum and Gallery, York, England features twenty new quilts designed and created by Kaffe Fassett in response to fifteen significant historic quilts, dating from 1780-1949, selected by the artist from the York Quilt Museum and Gallery. The traditional historic quilts provide contrast to Fassett’s bold fabric designs and explosion of color. San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles is one of only two American museum venues to host this spectacular exhibition.

Additional loans from Fassett’s family and a private collector represent over fifty years of the artist’s work in painting, knitwear, needlepoint design, and ceramics, illustrating the full range of Fassett’s prodigious talents. The additional material provides visitors with a rich experience and deeper understanding of Fassett’s lifelong creative journey. Now in his seventies, one of world’s foremost fiber artists and designers continues to be extraordinarily prolific and shows no signs of slowing down.

Born and raised in Big Sur, California, Fassett studied art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, but has made England his home since the mid 1960s. Fassett transformed the hand-knitting world in the 1970s with his bold use of color, incorporating an unprecedented twenty shades of yarn in one sweater! He continued to explore needlepoint, mosaics, rug making, tapestries, yarn and fabric design, costume and set design, and as this exhibition brilliantly illustrates, quilt making. His influence in the quilt world has been as profound as his effect on knitting, needlepoint and other fiber arts.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website

To celebrate this landmark exhibition, a commemorative book, Kaffe Fassett's Heritage Quilts, is a curated collection of rare and treasured quilts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries such as the Church Window, Log Cabin, Hearts and Crosses, and other rare designs. All 20 featured quilts are redesigned in the bold contemporary fabrics of world-renowned textile designer Kaffe Fassett. The vibrant fabrics designed by Fasset, Philip Jacobs, and Brandon Mably are showcased in 100 stunning photographs of both the new and heritage quilts, patterns, templates and instructions for each of Fassett’s quilts.