Colour! & Getting Inspired by Kaffe Fassett

I love looking at Kaffe Fassett's books about his home and crafts. I take total comfort in the fact that this man not only dabbles in, but is successful in crafts including knitting, quilting, fabric design, ceramics, needlepoint, mosaicing AND painting. Phew! I don't know how he does it all, but he does, he has, and due to my interest in many different areas of craft, I'm happy with that thought for now.

Kaffe at home

I would love to hear a 'day in the life of' or be a fly on the wall for a week or so in his house. Just to see how he squeezes it all in.

He seems to have enough fantastic amazing achievements under his belt for him to be indoctrinated into some sort of art/ design/ craft hall of fame, of which I won't go into here; but if you are interested you can read about him on his website's biography page.

I've been flicking through one of his books Welcome Home (affiliate link) that was published in 2010. I can foresee a future collection of Kaffe's books expanding in my own home library. (They would probably never leave my coffee table.)

More than half of the book is used to describe and show his wonderfully creative & colourful home. The second half has some craft projects with instruction for quilts, rugs and a brief explanation of mosaicing.

He paints his walls, glues fabric and paper to them, mosaics surfaces and just has explosions of colour and pattern everywhere, and I love it.

I am so inspired by his home. It's just the sort of thing I want to do here at my place. Just fill the walls and every nook and cranny so that there is something for me to look at everywhere I turn. I feel more comforted the more decorative things get. Let's not confuse that with clutter and really try to stretch the imagination and pretend that I'm not a hoarder. Ok? ;)

An outdoor mosaic by Kaffe

To see more of his home watch this video I found on youtube. I find his home so wonderful it makes me teary! 

Other things I have been thinking about Kaffe recently:

1. Imagine if as a child he was steered away from pattern, fabrics and crafts. I'm not sure what his life story is as a youngster, but he's a reminder that we need to foster and support our children's interests and skills. Even if they go against the status quo.

2. I love that he's so eccentric yet popular.

3. I love that he's a man making all this stuff. My brother used to crochet (and enjoy it) when he was younger. If only boys were encouraged to continue with these interests.

And here's a quote I loved from Kaffe on people's use of colour (of which they sometimes seem afraid to do so).

"I think that people have a much more poetic soul for colour than they think at first and I give people licence, I think... I say, come on! Read the riot act and express yourself, express that inner person which might be lemon yellow and bright pink. Let it come out! And I think I'm very encouraging to people to have a go and experience colour."

Yes! Experience it :)

After flicking through this book I got inspired and loaded up some paints on my brushes and continued on with a project I have going on in my bathroom:

Certainly not as detailed as Kaffe's rooms, but hopefully I'll get there!

And I also got back into mosaicing with this one that I made incorporating some elements of my artwork.

So I'll continue flicking through his Welcome Home book and I would love to get a couple more of his books to give me more inspiration and fuel to carry on with some more projects. So inspiring!

I'd love to hear about who inspires you to be more creative.

Jules :)

*Affiliate links help me earn small commissions on products (at no extra cost to you), which helps support my love of blogging and sharing creative things. You can be confident that I only ever recommend or link to products that I'm genuinely into.