Carolyn Friedlander

The modern quilt world has it’s stars, one of them is Carolyn Friedlander, although she is so quiet and unassuming, that star doesn’t quite fit the bill.It is very rare to have our monthly quilt meeting on a Friday night, but when a special designer is in town, it’s worth going.  We had a smaller crowd than I had expected – I’m sure changing the day had a lot to do with it.Carolyn trained as an architect before discovering quilting. (sorry about the quality of the picture – taken at night with my phone). She is comfortable creating house blocks, but it is much more than that, there is a certain meticulousness to her work, not perfect symmetrical blocks, just an overall feeling.Her outhouse pattern, using many of her own prints. I love her sense of color, her ability to use low volume fabrics with pops of bright. Her quilting is very well thought out, nothing is left to chance.Turns out her favorite methods of piecing are needle turned applique; seen here in the circles – or rather the rows of trees one would see on an architectural drawing. The other is paper piecing, all those house were done that way.  Here she is playing with color, she had a few samples of this quilt – each using different fabrics;  each one taking on a very different character as a result.She learned applique by making Hawaiian blocks (something I plan on doing very soon).  She uses the ‘snowflake’ method of cutting the appliqué patch. Here she folded the fabric 8 times, I’m still trying to wrap my mind around that. The appliqué section here is cut from on large piece of fabric.  This is a perfect example of using different fabrics to achieve very different results. The far left is bold, graphic and the quilting gets lost in the design. The center one is calmer, staying in the same color family. The far right is where the quilting sings, since the fabrics are all solids.

Someone asked her about using fabrics other than her own, I loved her answer – I love fabric.  The fabrics here are so different from what she designs; of course she should avail herself of everything out there – just like the rest of us.Another example of needle turned appliqué, I think in this case she folded the fabric like an Thiaccordion before cutting.This quilt is what I’m talking about her meticulousness – the outer circle  matches, the inner ones don’t. She has achieved a very pleasing balance, both in design and color and of course the use of quilting.This quilt is Block of the month tutorial, its’ a lesson in needle turned applique, can be purchased either as individual segments or as the whole pattern. For those who don’t like the cutesy or the juvenile one often finds in appliqué; this is a very refreshing modern approach.

Finally, our gift for showing up on a Friday nightEveryone got a charm pack (2.5″ squares) of her prints together with Kona solids that she feels compliment the prints.  Mind will probably end up being combined with other charm packs, the idea of sticking with only one line of fabric, no matter how creative it is – just doesn’t work for me.

A number of my friends took classes with Carolyn, from their IG posts I’d say that she is as good a teacher as she is a lecturer, quilter and fabric designer.