My Friend Kathy French

This is me with my friend Kathy French when she visited me in November 2015. We met online somewhere in early 2012 when she was working on her quilt, Roses for Rosita. It's original, and all free pieced. She didn't use any templates or patterns. I was blown away and we became friends pretty quick.

Kathy visited me in August 2012 and we spent our time talking quilts for two days. This is one of the incredible free pieced houses she made. You can read about this visit here. 

Kathy was deaf, but she wore hearing aids and could read lips. When she talked, she had the flat, distinctive sound of a deaf person talking. I had to pay attention to face her when I talked, and speak distinctly. When I told her I hoped the noise of my busy street wouldn't keep her awake at night, she replied that it didn't matter, because she couldn't hear it anyway.

Kathy and I kept in touch by email (she couldn't speak on the phone, obviously) and when my friend Julie Sefton asked me about quilters who might be interested in testing her process notes for her book, Build-a-Barn, and join the Secret Society of Barn Builders, I immediately suggested Kathy.

 This is Kathy's barn. It's the barn attached to her house in Belfast Maine.

 I visited Kathy in the summer of 2015 and spent four days with her. We had a blast, as you can see. We walked all around her town of Belfast, talked quilts, looked at quilts, took pictures of quilts, cooked, shopped, ate ice cream, drove around looking at barns, got lost, got found, and laughed some more.

One morning I woke up early and explored Kathy's studio. This is the drawing she made before she made her barn block.

This is the real barn. Yeah. Kathy was GOOD!

In 2016 Kathy visited me Thanksgiving weekend. We barely had any time together, but we took the photo at the top of this post. It was the last time we were together. Last June she wrote that she had developed Stage 4 lung cancer that spread into organs, bones, and brain. The cancer was so aggressive that radiation, chemotherapy, and other treatments failed to stop or slow down the spreading. Kathy had never smoked.

Late last September I wrote to Kathy and asked how she was. I wished her happy birthday and told her I missed her and loved her. She told me had stopped treatment because it was getting worse with the Chemo, not better.

I waited to hear from her again, and when I heard nothing, I wrote again last week. Her husband replied that she died peacefully on November 1.

I'm sad, and I'm pissed. I lost a great friend, and I miss her. I learned a lot from her and was amazed by her work ethic and how hard she worked to learn what she didn't know.

But I'm really glad I got to know her.



Kathy blogged here, Quilted Under the Influence.