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One of my favorite parts of the International Quilt Festival in Chicago was visiting the classrooms to see what’s up and coming in the quilting world. The class that really stuck out to me was called “Snowball Quilts” taught by renown designer Kaffe Fassett and Liza Prior Lucy. Fassett’s line of fabrics are stunning and vibrant, using bright colors and large floral prints. Students in the class spent their day picking out fabrics and laying out a quilt in a somewhat different style than we’re used to.

In general, when you pick out fabrics for a quilt, you’ll pick contrasting colors and differing pattern sizes. If your first fabric has a large print, the second will have a medium print and the third will have a small print – or none at all. For Fassett’s class, all these rules were thrown out the window. Students were encouraged to create a pattern that wouldn”t draw your eye to one particular place. Most of the fabrics chosen were in a similar color family – so quilts would look mostly red or mostly green in some cases.

In addition, after laying out the larger squares students cut out smaller squares that were placed at the intersections of the larger patchwork. This created a hexagon effect. Even the smaller squares were to be a color that wouldn’t stand out, so you could only see the hexagon effect if you really looked at it. The outcome was like a blending of color, texture and pattern, which highlighted the beauty and boldness of each quilt.

It was very inspiring to see all the amazing quilts that were designed that day. Here is a quick video that scans the walls where the quilts were being worked on.