exhibition: Kaffe Fassett, A Life in Colour

A few weeks ago I arranged for a some fellow knitters  to meet up at the Fashion and Textile Museum in south London for the Kaffe Fassett exhibition, “A Life in Colour”.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a particular fan of Kaffe Fassett’s work, but he’s a bit of a legend in the knitting and textile world, so it was a good opportunity to find out more.

The first part of the exhibition focused on some of his other artwork such as paintings and ceramics, but I was keen to move on to the knitting.   I was delighted to see all the ends left loose on his first ever knit cardigan:

I believe he’s quite renowned for not weaving in the ends on his work, which is quite a sin for knitters.  It makes me think that there’s hope for us mere knitting mortals!

I’d joked that I would need sunglasses in order to cope with the bright colours in the exhibition, but the effect really wasn’t eye-searingly bright at all.  There were large wall-sized knitted hangings:

as well as some fantastic quilts, which I loved.  Quilting is one of those hobbies that’s on my “to-do-when-I have-time” list, and I found Kaffe’s work really inspiring:

I really liked this quilt made from men’s shirts.  It’s definitely the sort of thing I’d love to own and use:

And of course there was plenty of the classic Kaffe Fasset knits, such as the Long Leaf Coat published by Rowan in 1992:

The museum also has a lovely little cafe, where we spent about an hour in the cafe afterwards drinking tea and eating cake (they had to kick us out at closing time!).  I’d highly recommend a visit, and the exhibition is  on until the 29th of June.