Sunnyside Trail: Inspiration

I was pretty distracted last month at our guild meeting when our program chair, Linda, announced that Freddy would be coming to town so I missed some of the planning details. Maybe I blocked it out because even the mention of Freddy's name made me miss those Divas so much.

Linda spoke very highly of her experience on a quilting cruise in Europe with Freddy a few years ago. The class project they worked on was similar to this. Don't miss the topiaries!

I’m not sure if Freddy is still teaching regularly. I got the impression that Linda’s relationship with her is what facilitated our lucky weekend. Freddy lives east of San Francisco (“over the hill from Berkeley”) and said there are lots of inspiring artists in her area. Freddy taught a similar class to the project above on Saturday. Linda had a reception at her house on Sunday then Tuesday night we had a lecture at the guild. Unfortunately, blocking out the weekend for potential plans with out of town friends prohibited me from opting into the class and reception but I was so glad to be able to hear her speak at the guild meeting.

Freddy’s 88 now and says she works in her studio from about 7-4 each day, usually 4-6 times per week. She doesn’t do much piecing at all anymore and focuses on collages instead. She cuts three different shapes and sorts them into boxes for sky, landscape, and objects. She said her color sense has always been by intuition so there is a lot of auditioning and trial and error. She uses Elmer’s glue sticks to glue the pieces down and reposition them if necessary. Once she’s done with her collage, she sends it to her quilter (I don’t recall her name). She’s been using this quilter for about 15 years now and they have a close relationship. She said she tells her quilter … if anything falls off when you unfold it, put the piece where you think it looks good. The quilter machine appliques all of the pieces’ edges then quilts the pieces, often using facing instead of binding. Here’s another quilter’s post about the class/process that mirrors what Freddy described.

She loves day of the dead and Lady of Guadalupe images.

Her one and only experiment with pastel fabrics.

Freddy is currently working on a series of collage faces. Here, the guild members are holding some of them for display.

Freddy said that she’s probably made about 500 quilts and talked about a time when she sold 96 in a short period of time to make room for more quilts. She said that the heavily pieced ones such as the ones we admire in her collaboration books are most precious to her because she knows she never would/could make those again. She wouldn’t have the “eyesight” or the same type of attention to detail these days. She said the back is important as the front and asked the holders to make sure to show the backs (many of which were vintage Marimekko).

She mentioned her inspiration for her collage quilts (Edrica Huws) and said that the two books written about her are super expensive because they have been OOP for a long time. A guild member googled one and it was $400 on Amazon (if you can get a copy). She never met Edrica but said she lived to 92 before being hit by a car on a Paris street.

None of the people at my table during the lecture had heard of her before the weekend’s activities. They kept commenting how sharp she is for her age. I need to look and see if her Simply Quilts episode is out there on video somewhere.

I’ll apologize in advance for the photos. I was in the back of the room and so I was zooming with my phone.

She said she must have bought 15 yards of the Kaufman print of the circles used for the first border (and she's used it all).

She said it took a lot of trial and error to make the liberated trees but the secret was to make a typical tree but add a crooked trunk. She said she talked to Gwen a couple of weeks ago and she is enjoying retired life on her island.