Kaffe Fassett

Born in California, Kaffe Fassett traveled to London as a young artist, and eventually made it his home.  In 1968, on a trip to Inverness, Scotland, he purchased 20 colors of Shetland wool yarn, and learned to knit on the train home.

In the decades since then, Kaffe’s exuberant, painterly designs for hand knitters have appeared in every issue of Rowan Magazine, from Number 1 to the current issue. His exploration of color is without boundaries: in addition to painting, he also designs collections of print fabrics and quilts, needlepoints and mosaics. In 2019, he collaborated with fashion house Coach on a collection based on his archive of print fabrics.

A visionary in his bold use of color, Kaffe was the first living textile artist to have a one-person show at the Victoria and Albert Museum. He is the author of many books, including Glorious Knits, Kaffe Fassett’s Bold Blooms: Quilts and Other Works Celebrating Flowers, Kaffe Fassett’s Pattern Library, Kaffe Knits Again, and his autobiography, Dreaming in Color.

As longtime admirers of Kaffe’s work, we are over the moon that he designed all of the projects in Modern Daily Field Guide No. 13: Master Class and Modern Daily Knitting Field Guide No. 16: Painterly.