Ooh-la-la! From Quiltopolis to Provence

Frenchman André Girod and his wife Françoise drove to Winterset from Chicago one October day years ago during Madison County’s annual Covered Bridge Festival. The Girods had noticed an item in a Chicago newspaper about a quilt show going on that weekend. André, an artist and historian, was interested in American art forms, owned a unique event space at his home in the South of France, and wanted to feature quilts.

Within forty-eight hours, I was handing over some of my best quilts to my new French friends to take back with them to France. My first trip to the tiny Provençal town of Lauris (pop. 3,789) was to see those quilts on display at Les Jardins du Magali.

A year or so later, Andre and I were coordinating quilters’ tours of Provence. My daughter Mary (not a quilter yet, but definitely quilt-savvy) went along as my assistant. That’s Mary and me with André under one of the plane trees at Les Jardins.

The American quilters we took to Provence shopped for traditional Provençal fabrics in shops like the one below in Aix-en-Provence. (The fabrics are called Indiennes, because the style evolved from cottons printed in India.)

They watched traditional fabrics being screen printed at Les Olivades, near Avignon.

We also visited the fabric museum at Souliado, near Tarascon. (Souliado translates to that moment when the sun breaks through the clouds after the rain.)

The highlight of each trip was French/American Day in the gravel courtyard at Les Jardins de Magali, the art space Andre and Françoise carved into the side of a cave from Roman times. French quilters from the area gathered with us for a buffet luncheon beneath the plane trees, used universal hand gestures to describe patchwork patterns and sewing techniques, and exchanged small friendship quilts. French and American flags hung side-by-side over the entrance to the galleries.

Just think . . . a quilt show at an elementary school gym in Winterset (pop. 5,455) lured a French couple to Iowa. My love of France told me to welcome them into my living room, resulting in an international friendship and numerous trips to one of the most beautiful places in in the world—so many that until recently I thought I’d had my fill, but non!

My youngest daughter Rebecca is the programmer at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago and attends the big festival in Cannes each May for her job. Post-Cannes, Rebecca’s husband Jack Newell, my husband Mark, and I rendezvoused with her in the seaside town of Cassis. The four of us spent a week or so visiting Provençal towns I remembered (Aix-en-Provence, Les Baux-de-Provence, L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, Arles, and Avignon) and discovering new places (Chateau La Coste, not far from Cassis, was our favorite), soaking up the beauty, washing down fantastic food with Côtes-de-Luberon rosés, and playing gin together under the plane trees.

We relinquished our voiture in Lyon, boarded a river boat on the Rhône, and cruised our way to Avignon (more beauty, more rosé, more killer rounds of gin), and (mon Dieu!) bumped into another pair of Iowans, Sarah and Jeremy of Iowa City, on our boat.

As we were figuring out who we knew in common, I mentioned I was a quilter. “My mom’s a very avid quilter,” Sarah said, and she’s traveling with us. “Well,” I replied, regretting my egotism the moment I spoke, “she’s probably heard of me.”

I was still kicking myself when Harriett McMahill arrived on deck and exclaimed, “Oh, my goodness, it’s Marianne Fons!” Jeremy snapped a photo of Harriett and me the day we rode the Train de L’Ardeche (an open-air train pulled by an antique steam locomotive) through the Doux River gorge, not exactly French/American Day, but kinda.

Andre passed away in 2019 at the age of 89, and Les Jardins is now closed, but we swung by Lauris on our journey to say hello to Françoise.

P.S. The phrase, “ooh-la-la,” is used to express surprise, admiration or excitement about something connected to France or French people, not necessarily something of a risqué nature.

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