Linda French's Biography

Linda was born and raised in a NJ suburb, traveling south to the University of North Carolina where she graduated in Nursing. She worked in Intensive Care and Pediatric Emergency Services for the next 30 years.

Linda married in the late 70's, and to get to know her mother-in-law better, Linda visited her every Wednesday morning for coffee. During these visits, her mother-in-law  pulled out a box of quilt blocks she was working on in a beginning sampler class. She had such enthusiasm while showing the blocks, Linda thought she would give it a try. She signed up for a class at a technical institute in NC (all handwork). In 1981, after her 1st daughter was born, they moved to Dayton, OH where she started teaching beginner quilt classes. She went to the charter meeting of the Creative Quilters Guild where she is still a member today. In 1983, the family was transferred to Melbourne, Australia for 3 years, where their youngest daughter was born. While living in Australia, she taught quilt classes and joined the Waverly Guild. She made wonderful friends there. The first quilt that she took graph paper out and designed was for Susan, as she was preparing to leave the country and say goodbye.

Upon returning to the USA, with 2 little ones in tow, the family settled in Ohio. While working in pediatrics and raising two girls, she quilted every opportunity she could. At this point, almost all her work was done by hand, even the piecing. Then she suffered an arm injury that put her arm (thumb to shoulder) in a cast for 2 months. She had no use of her hand, and this total withdrawal from quilting was unacceptable. So she called a group of her quilting friends, and they came over armed with rotary boards and cutters. They cut squares (a lot of them) from a pile of fabric she provided. She spent the next couple of months as she went tough Physical Therapy to get the use of her arm and hand back, working with those squares, learning about gradation, watercolors, and just playing with color. As miserable as her recovery was, it was also a blessing in disguise, for it started her transformation into design, color and as quilters say “jumping out of your box”!

A couple of years later, a new neighbor moved in. Margaret is an artist who does  murals on the walls of homes. They became good friends and she would frequently visit, look at her neutral walls, and comment, “you need more color in your life”.  Linda started choosing colors to try, but her husband wasn’t too keen on adding strong color to the walls.  So when Bob went out of town for a few days, a dark raspberry color filled the den.  After recovering from the shock on his return, adding color in every room became the goal.  This experience gave Linda an even greater respect for how color changes everything. She will always love traditional quilting, but now adds color and design to give it more excitement.

She is currently retired from Nursing (and from helping her husband run a business). Both of her daughters are married (no grandchildren yet!).

After retiring, she met Doug and Martha from A Touch of Thread at a quilt show and purchased her longarm. She fell in love with machine quilting. She spent most of the first year doodling and playing with feathers. The freedom of freehand was addicting. Linda’s most recent quilt “Circles of Life” won:

• MQS - Best of Show 2010
• Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival - Best of Show , 2010
• AQS Quilt Exposition Knoxville - Best of Show , 2009
• MQX - Best Solo Artist 2010
• NQA - Best Machine Quilt, 1st place Mixed Techniques