Look what I did yesterday...

I spent the day with Frieda Anderson!

A few weeks ago, I'd read on Frieda's blog that she was coming to Folsom, California to give a workshop to the guild there. Folsom is just over 2 hours away from me, and I immediately emailed the program chair to find out if there was any room for visitors. There were just two spots left, she said, so I quickly called my friend Pat who agreed to join me for the trek. So we signed up, and yesterday was the day.

I hope Frieda appreciates how much I wanted to meet her and participate in the workshop, because I don't get up at 5:40 am to see just ANYone. I pulled up at Pat's house at 7am to find her standing on the curb, also eager to get going. We planned time for a lot of traffic, but luckily didn't get much. We were in Folsom by 9:15, in time to stop for coffee and a scone before the workshop started.

My only shots of Frieda are action shots. In both, she's showing with her samples of how to do (or how NOT to do!) some important part of the fusing technique. She was friendly and gracious and very calm under pressure. She didn't flinch or get ruffled when various women in the room had problems with their bad Wonder Under. The Folsom guild ladies were also marveling how Frieda remained cool and collected when her projector threw a fit during her presentation to their guild the night before. They all loved her talk and were very impressed at how she seemed so unphased by that unfortunate glitch.



Frieda let each class member choose a pattern to work from to learn her approach to fusing. Both Pat and I chose Trilliums. This is Frieda's little quilt:



Of course, it was great to see her quilts in person. She had gorgeous hand-dyed fabric and she uses them well to create designs with a lot of contrast.

I was really glad Pat wanted to come, as she's never had "formal instruction" at fusing and she's been wanting to give it a focussed try. The bad news was that Pat had gotten a hunk of the bad Wonder Under.... Here she is peeling the bad paper off. The good news is that Pat didn't seem too phased by it, and for the rest of her project I shared my old, good W-U and she could see how easily worked when the product wasn't defective.



Here's a really blurry shot of how far I got by 4pm.



It was a very fun day. One exciting part was that I got to use the stunning pink thermos that Roger gave me to enjoy hot afternoon coffee.



Surprisingly, the traffic coming home wasn't too bad, and Pat and I stopped on the way to enjoy a leisurely dinner at a cute little Italian restaurant. I was home in time to put Caroline to bed, pat the dog, give Roger a kiss, and fall into bed myself.

Thanks, Frieda, for a fun day.