Our Special Guests: Guicy Giuce
His name is Giuseppe Ribaudo, but you would all know him better as Giucy Giuce.
I grew up in Long Island, NY. First-generation Sicilian-American on my dad’s side and second on my mom’s, my family lived on the bottom floor of my maternal grandparents’ house. My parents were restaurant owners, and as such, spent much of their time working, so my sister and I were often upstairs with my grandparents.
My grandmother is a remarkably talented and prolific seamstress. She taught me to sew in the Sicilian fashion, which is to say she would show me how to do something, and I would have approximately 10 seconds to demonstrate that I had learned it perfectly before she’d abruptly pick me up and sew the seam herself. I never much cared for the finicky elements of garment-making, so sewing took a backseat for a while. It wasn’t until I was in college that I discovered quilting. I began with sewing improvisational quilts before moving into modern traditional territory. I joined Instagram shortly thereafter and quickly found myself making long-distance friends in the ever-growing quilting community via social media.
After bouncing around the country for about a decade, I decided to move back to New York to pursue a career in textiles. Within a few months of being in NYC I was offered a marketing position at Andover Fabrics and was promoted to multimedia manager a year later. In 2018, I refocused my energy on fabric design and released my first collection Quantum. In 2021 I released my tenth collection called Nonna, an homage to my beloved grandmother and her home, where I learned to sew. My most recent release, Sleuth, is the third and final collection in a true crime series I have dubbed The Gnarls Hollow Trilogy.
