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Gwen Marston - Keynote Speaker, Workshops, Special Exhibit
Gwen Marston is a professional quilt teacher, author and artist. She has taught and lectured both nationally and internationally since the late 70’s, and for thirty years, she ran a series of five retreats near her home in northern Michigan. She is perhaps best known for sharing her methods for making quilts without patterns, a process she refers to as “Liberated.” She has written 27 books, two of which won awards: Mary Schafer: American Quilt Maker, was awarded a 2005 Michigan Notable Books award, and 37 Sketches won a 2012 New York Book Show award. Gwen has had twenty-nine solo exhibits and participated in many group shows. In 2013, she had an exhibit at the Taupo Art Museum in Taupo, New Zealand, and an exhibit of her work was shown at the Dennos Art Museum in Traverse City, Michigan Jan 18-April 27, 2014.
Melissa Averinos
Workshops
Melissa Averinos is a painter, fabric designer, craft book author/illustrator and longarm quilter. She embraces imperfection and loves to make stuff. She is a good listener, lover of unicorns, rust and strawberry rhubarb pie. Melissa's quilt 'face #1' was a judge's choice award winner at Quiltcon 2015. Melissa lives on Cape Cod with her adorable husband and golden retriever puppy. For creative inspiration and juicy honesty, visit Melissa's blog melissaaverinos.com.
Jeni Baker
Workshops
Jeni Baker has been sewing since she was 11 years old, and loves nothing more than to be surrounded by fabric. She is a licensed fabric designer for Art Gallery Fabrics and self-publishes patterns for the modern sewer. Jeni teaches sewing and quilting classes locally in Madison, WI. Her first book, Patchwork Essentials: The Half-Square Triangle, will be published in Fall 2015. She is always looking for ways to be creative everyday, and simply enjoys living a handmade life. In addition to sewing, her hobbies include knitting, baking, collecting vintage kitchenware and playing with her bunny, George. For more on Jeni's work, visit her website: Incolororder.com.
Rebecca Bryan
Workshops and Lecture
As a fourth-generation quilter, Rebecca grew up in a family of makers. Her mother graciously taught her everything she knew about sewing and helped Rebecca make her first official quilt for her first apartment. Rebecca has been quilting passionately ever since. Rebecca is a quilt designer, blogger, and author of Modern Rainbow: 14 Imaginative Quilts that Play with Color (Stash Books/ C&T;). She currently lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with her husband, four children, and one dog. You can find out more about Rebecca and her quilts by visiting her blog: www.bryanhousequilts.com.
Christina Cameli
Workshops and Lecture
Christina Cameli has been quilting for more than a decade,starting with a box of her grandmother’s fabric scraps. She now teaches,designs patterns and writes books to share her love of quilting, especiallyfree-motion quilting. Christina is the author of the books First Steps to Free-Motion Quilting and Step-by-Step Free-Motion Quilting. She lives with her family inPortland, Oregon where she works as a nurse-midwife. Christina writes thequilting blog A Few Scraps and is a member and past-president of the Portland Modern Quilt Guild.
Kim Eichler-Messmer
Workshops and Lecture
Kim Eichler-Messmer is an Assistant Professor at the Kansas City Art Institute and runs the Kansas City Textile Studio, a small community based textile art center. Her book “Modern Color: An Illustrated Guide to Dyeing Fabric for Modern Quilts” was published in the fall of 2013. Kim’s hand dyed, one of a kind quilts have been shown nationally and featured in prominent design blogs. She is a self-proclaimed color nerd and friend of cats.
Libs Elliott
Workshops and Lecture
Elizabeth (Libs) Elliott is a quilter and textile artist exploring the intersection of technology and traditional craft by using generative design to build handmade quilts. All her quilts are designed using a programming language called Processing. Libs started quilting in 2009 and the generative quilt project began in 2012 as a collaboration with designer and technologist, Joshua Davis. She has exhibited and done speaking engagements internationally. Libs’ work has been covered in both design and quilting publications including Design Milk, Casa Vogue Brazil, Generation Q and Quilt Now. She studied Material Art & Design at OCAD University and lives in Toronto, CA. You can find out more about Libs’ work and quilt patterns at www.libselliott.com.
Sarah Fielke
Workshops
Sarah Fielke, is a quilter, teacher, designer and author of five hugely successful quilt books: Material Obsession, Material Obsession Two, Quilting: From Little Things, Hand Quilted with Love and Little Quilts. Her new book, Old Quilts New Life, is due out September 2015. Based in Australia, Sarah has designed seven quilting fabric collections in her trademark whimsical designs, her latest with Windham Fabrics. She regularly teaches classes on how to make her unique style of quilts at craft shows and in quilt shops around the world, and online at craftsy.com. You can find her at sarahfielke.com, facebook.com/sarah.fielke, twitter.com/sarahfielke,instagram.com/sfielke, and on her blog, thelastpiece.net.
Cristy Fincher
Workshops
Cristy Fincher was born with a love for all things sewing. Cristy, and her mom, Master Quilter, Sharon Schamber, made their first quilt together 20 years ago. Her passion for teaching quilting grew, and 10 years ago, she opened her online store, www.PurpleDaisiesLLC.com, where she focuses on sewing and quilting education. In 2007, Cristy and Sharon co-authored “Piece-By-Piece: Machine Applique”. Cristy has spent her life learning about all aspects of quilting from her mother. Cristy is passing on Sharon’s legacy of techniques through teaching local, regional and national classes. Cristy shares her own tutorials, and time saving techniques, on her blog www.sewmuchlikemom.com.
Mary Fons
Lecture
Mary Fons is a writer who grew up under a quilt. In 2010, Mary created Quilty, a weekly online program for the beginner quilter (F+W Media). There are over 250 episodes of Quilty to date. From 2011-2015, Mary served as editor of Quilty magazine. Mary co-hosts Love of Quilting on public television with her
mom, quilter and educator Marianne Fons, along with other special guests. Mary's quilts are frequently featured in Love of Quilting Magazine and Quilty. Her first book,Make + Love Quilts: Scrap Quilts for the 21st Century, was published by C&T;/StashBooks in June of 2014. Dear Quilty, a Quilty retrospective, w.as published in March 2014 (F+W Media). Her first fabric line, "Small Wonders" released in Fall 2015 with Springs Creative.
Carolyn Friedlander
Workshops
Carolyn Friedlander is a quilt and fabric designer working from her hometown of Lake Wales, Florida, an environment she enjoys for its warm weather, few distractions, and potent community of quilters and crafters. In her work, she draws inspiration from features of the Florida landscape—its long leaf pines, palmettos, water, scrub land, sand—as well as her background in architecture. You can follow Carolyn and her work on her website (carolynfriedlander.com) and blog (carolynfriedlander.com/blog).
Amy Garro
Workshops
Amy Garro is a modern quilter and mother of three. She was first introduced to quilting and paper piecing in elementary school, but has been seriously quilting for the last four years. She attended the University of Notre Dame, where she began as an art major and ended up graduating with a degree in Theology. Today, Amy enjoys quilting, pattern writing, and participating in her local Modern Guilt Guild. She writes about her modern quilting endeavors at www.13spools.com. Here, she also shares patterns, tutorials, and her musings on the artistic journey.
Amy Garro is the author of recently released Paper Pieced Modern. Her works and patterns also appear in magazines, including Modern Quilts Unlimited.
Jacquie Gering
Workshops and Lecture
Jacquie is a passionate modern quilt maker and designer known for her innovative "out of the box" designs, striking message quilts and unique style. Quilting Modern: Techniques and Projects for Improvisational Quilts is her first book. Jacquie is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Modern Quilt Guild and she blogs and shares her quilting knowledge on her popular blog, Tallgrass Prairie Studio. She lives in Kansas City with her husband and black lab, Bruno.
Alison Glass
Workshops
Alison Glass is a surface designer living in Virginia with her husband, daughter, and son. Her love of the combination of color and shape make fiber design a perfect fit. She designs fabric for Andover Fabrics, creates patterns and art prints, teaches within the industry, and is the author of Alison Glass Appliqué. Alison is passionate about the ideas of making choices that are consistent with who a person is and living in the present.
Christine Haynes
Workshops
Christine Haynes is a Los Angeles-based sewing author, teacher, and pattern designer with a line of sewing patterns–Christine Haynes Patterns–which are perfect for the vintage-loving modern seamstress. She has written four books, How to Speak Fluent Sewing , Skirts & Dresses for First Time Sewers, The Complete Photo Guide to Clothing Construction, and Chic & Simple Sewing. Her articles have been published in Sewstylish, Sew News, Craftstylish, and Craft Zine magazines. She teaches sewing classes in person and online, and her work has been featured in Threads, Mollie Makes, the New York Times, the New York Post, the LA Times, Martha Stewart’s radio network, People.com, LA Weekly, Daily Candy, NBC’s Today Show, and more.
Luke Haynes
Workshops and Lecture
LUKE is an artist to watch. He is up-and-coming while continuing to innovate and design new ways to create art. His work is currently in the Brooklyn Museum, the Newark Museum and the Headquarters of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Haynes currently lives in Los Angeles, CA. He studied architecture at Cooper Union in New York and considers his fabric art to be an architectural method of images creation. His works can be classified as quilts since they follow the traditional methods of construction, but they are much more. His concepts and images pull from the annals of historical painting and sculpture but are also allowed to pull from craft and the domestic. This allows for pieces that have multi layers of visual as well as conceptual intrigue.
Sandi Sawa Hazlewood
Panelist
Known as the "Crafty Planner", Sandi is a trained city planner who followed her love for sewing and quilting as her second career. She is one of the founding members and first President of the San Diego Modern Quilt Guild. She has designed patterns for magazines, has her own pattern line, co-designed the Modern Quilt Sampler Coloring Book and has a podcast about all things crafty.
Shea Henderson
Workshops
A former middle school math teacher, Shea Henderson now owns Empty Bobbin Sewing Studio, a sewing and quilt pattern company. She is the author of the award winning book School of Sewing: Learn it. Teach it. Sew Together. and her work has been featured in several books and magazines. She is one of founding members and former president of the Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild. Shea lives in Kansas City, MO with her husband and three young children. Find more of her work at emptybobbinsewing.com.
Anna Maria Horner
Workshop
To many people, the Anna Maria brand means color and inspiration in the form of craft, sewing, needlework, books, patterns, kits and friendly how-to. Since 2006, her ever-growing library of fabrics has delighted and adorned creative souls around the globe. Constantly setting the bar higher in material choices, the industry has come to rely on Anna Maria to provide gorgeous new lines as well as to inspire clever ways to use them. She works from her home studio in Nashville, Tennessee, where she makes a home with her husband Jeff, seven children and a pair of yellow labs.
Lizzy House
Workshops
Lizzy House is a printmaker, fabric designer, author, and educator. She has released ten lines of fabric including one of her latest for Andover, Constellations, has designed a series of quilt patterns and is the author of the book How to Enter the World of Textile Design. Lizzyhas a BFA in Printmaking and currently resides in Salt Lake City. When Lizzy isn't printing, designing fabric, writing, or teaching, she can usually be found curled in a small ball asleep on an airplane. And no, she doesn't want any peanuts.
Rossie Hutchinson
Workshops and Lecture
Rossie Hutchinson is an award-winning modern quilter and international quilt teacher. Perhaps best known for founding and moderating the Flickr group Fresh Modern Quilts, she also writes a popular quilting blog and regularly contributes her ideas and quilt patterns to books and magazines. You can find some of her recent work in the books You Inspire Me to Quilt; The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters, and Quilting with a Modern Slant. Rossie lives in Michigan with her husband, dog, and goats. Find her on instagram at https://instagram.com/r0ssie_fmq/
Heather Jones
Workshops
Heather Jones is a designer and self-taught quilter who lives outside of Cincinnati, Ohio with her husband and two young children. She is the founder and former president of the Cincinnati Modern Quilt Guild, a three-time winner of the MQG’s Project Modern Challenges, and a finalist for the Martha Stewart American Made Awards. Heather recently finished her first solo publication with STC Craft | Melanie Falick Books that is scheduled for a fall 2015 release.
Bill Kerr
Workshops and Lecture
Bill Kerr co-founded Modern Quilt Studio with his wife, Weeks Ringle in 1999. Bill and Weeks wrote the first book on modern quilting, The Modern Quilt Workshop, as well as Quiltmaker’s Color Workshop, Quilts Made Modern and Transparency Quilts. They also co-authored a book with their daughter Sophie, A Kid’s Guide to Sewing. In 2011 they launched their magazine, Modern Quilts Illustrated. Their work has appeared in American Patchwork & Quilting, Quilts Japan, Australian Quilter’s Companion, Dwell, O:The Oprah Magazine, TIME, The New York Times, and Country Living. Bill and Weeks design several lines a year for Andover Fabrics. Bill is head of the Dept. of Art, Art History and Graphic Design at Dominican University.
Chawne Kimber
Panelist
Chawne Kimber is an award winning textile artist who has exhibited quilts and embroidery in galleries and festivals in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois, California, and Texas. When not manipulating cotton, she is a professor of mathematics at a small liberal arts college in the Northeast.
Johanna Masko
Workshops
Johanna Masko is an award-winning quilt designer, instructor and the author of a growing line of quilt patterns. She was born and raised in the Detroit area and holds a Fine Arts degree from the University of Michigan. She now makes her home in Toronto where she teaches quilting at The Workroom. As a quiltmaker and designer, Johanna is always looking for more efficient techniques to help streamline her quilt construction, and that also maintain a high level of craftsmanship. She loves all the quilts, from antique to contemporary and modern. Johanna has a great big fabric stash that is sometimes referred to as The Vault.
Maire-Rose Pike
Yoga Instructor
Maire-Rose Pike (E-RYT 200) first began practicing yoga in 1998. Throughout her years of practicing various types of yoga, Maire-Rose has witnessed yoga's ability to heal on many levels, from sore bodies to broken hearts. Incorporating wisdom from ancient yogic texts, Maire's Vinyasa Yoga classes are upbeat, poetic, and musical, while emphasizing conscious breath and movement. Maire-Rose received her 200-hr. teacher training in 2010 from Laughing Lotus NYC under the guidance of Dana Flynn, Sheri Celantano, Alison Cramer, and Mary Dana Abbott. She has also completed training in Restorative Yoga under Jamie Lyn Skolnick. After teaching at studios and gyms all over NYC, she has relocated to LA, where she is honored to share yoga with this beautiful community.
Jodi Robinson
Workshops
Jodi has been a quilter for the past 20 years, and has been a professional longarm quilter for 18 years. Jodi is an award winning quilter, and has been teaching nationally for the past 12 years. She has won numerous national awards for her machine quilting skills. Most recently, she won the Outstanding Modern Quilt Award at Road to California 2015. In addition to teaching, Jodi also designs pantograph quilting designs, has self-published nine machine quilting design books, and provides longarm quilting services to her clients. Jodi’s books and classes focus on using quick and easy methods to create beautiful, freehand machine quilting designs that will make your quilting unique. You can visit her blog at: http://jrdesigns.wordpress.com
Janice Ryan
Workshops
Janice has been a long-time addict of all things fabric and sewing. She began her career designing and sewing costumes for theatre, and she holds a master of fine arts in costume design from Carnegie Mellion University. The birth of her children (and the creation of her first baby quilt) took her in a new direction, where she discovered her love of quilting. Janice is co-author of The Modern Medallion Workbook released by C&T; publishing in Spring 2015 and she teaches classes at Sew Modern, in Los Angeles. You can find tips, patterns, and tutorials on her blog betteroffthread.com.
Amy Smart
Workshops
Amy Smart leaned to piece quilts as a child but began making quilts with a vengeance after the birth of her first baby 16 years ago. She’s worked in a local quilt shop, taught quilt classes, contributed to numerous books and magazines, and is the author of Fabulously Fast Quilts. Her favorite part of teaching is helping new quilters get started and ‘catch the fever.’ She writes about her quilting life on her blog Diary of a Quilter. She lives in Utah with her husband and their four lively children.
Anne Sullivan
Lecture
Anne Sullivan is a researcher, engineer, artist, quilter, writer and part-time pillow for her cat and Saint Bernard. She loves color, quilts, and technology and finds ways to talk about them whenever possible on her blog at Play Crafts. She also writes quilting programs including the popular Palette Builder tool, which creates palettes based on any photo and matches them to solid fabrics and thread. She has a book coming out with Interweave in 2016.
Angela Walters
Workshops and Lecture
Since learning how to quilt from her husband’s grandparents 10 years ago, Angela has been in love with the art of quilting. She purchased her first quilting machine 10 years ago and has been quilting professionally, teaching and giving trunk shows ever since. She loves traditional quilting but has found her niche quilting modern quilts and helping other learn how to adapt their quilting designs for modern quilts. Angela quilts from her home studio and blogs at Quilting Is My Therapy. Learn more at quiltingismytherapy.com.
Christa Watson
Workshops
Christa Watson is an award winning quilter, patterndesigner, EQ artist and author of Machine Quilting with Style. She loves toteach others how to successfully quilt on a home sewing machine and sheconsiders herself a cheerleader for the DIY modern aesthetic. She’s heavilyinvolved in both modern and traditional quilt guilds and loves to encourageeveryone to enjoy the style of quilting that appeals to them. Christa lives inLas Vegas, Nevada with her husband and three children who all think it’s normalto have a house full of fabric. Visit her at ChristaQuilts.com.
Pam Weeks
Lecture, Exhibit Tour
Pamela Weeks is the Binney Family Curator of the New England Quilt
Museum. She is a quilt historian and her first book Civil War Quilts was released in 2012. Three more books are in the works including “potholder” quilts, the collection of the New England Quilt Museum, and the quilts of Molly Upton. Weeks is an expert traditional quilter and contemporary fiber artist and has been a member of the league of NH Craftsmen since 1993. She is a certified appraiser of quilted textiles, and a member of the Professional Association of Appraisers of Quilted Textiles, and the American Quilters Society. She has lectured and taught quilting arts at regional and national shows. Besides a life in quilting, Weeks is an avid gardener and hiker, and lives in Durham, NH.
Valori Wells
Workshops
Valori is a quilter, author, fabric & pattern designer, painter and photographer. She also co-owns The Stitchin' Post in Sisters, OR. She came into quilting through osmosis, having a mother who shared her love of quilting and opened The Stitchin' Post in 1974. Valori's love of photography lead her to a bachelor's degree in fine arts. Photography and print making brought her to her present career as a fabric designer. Her fabrics portray larger than life images inspired by nature in fresh colors. Valori has been creating how-to quilting and lifestyle books since college, coauthoring nine books with her mom and three on her own. She and her husband, Ross, live just outside of Sisters with their daughters, Olivia Rose, Violette Grace and son, Teague Ashton.
Vanessa Vargas Wilson
Panelist
Vanessa Vargas Wilson, a.k.a Crafty Gemini, is a sewing and quilt pattern designer and online instructor. Her channel, TheCraftyGemini has over 225,000 subscribers and her tutorials have been viewed 20 million times worldwide. A law professor turned entrepreneur, Vanessa now shares her lifestyle and crafty skills with a global audience via the web. Her work has been featured on ABC's 20/20 and the New York Times as well as magazines like Quilty and Modern Quilts Unlimited. Vanessa is a first-generation American and a native Spanish speaker. She earned her B.A. and Juris Doctor from the University of Florida. She lives on an organic homestead in Florida with her husband, their two unschooled children and 40+ farm animals.
Krista Withers
Workshops
Krista lives and works as a long arm quilter in the beautiful Pacific Northwest with her husband and two children. She graduated from the University of Washington with a BFA in Painting. Influenced as a painter by the shapes that exist in the negative space beyond the subject, Krista draws inspiration in quilting from this same focus. She has been quilting professionally for nine years as well as designing patterns for digital quilting systems. She is eagerly shifting her attention towards teaching and sharing her passion for quilting with others. She works out of her garden studio where she quilts on a Gammill Classic Plus, with the occasional assist of her Intelliquilter.
Victoria Findlay Wolfe
Workshops and Lecture
Victoria Findlay Wolfe is a New York City based award winning quilter, fabric & Aurifil thread and SIZZIX designer, author of 15 Minutes of Play & Double Wedding Rings, Traditions Made Modern! (C&T; publishing), She is a Board member of the International Quilt Association, the Quilt Alliance member of the Advisory board of the International Quilt Study Center and runs several community drives with BumbleBeansBASICS. She is excited to share her series of 12 Double Wedding Ring Quilts, including QuiltCon 2013 Best in Show, "Double Edged Love", These works are currently on view at the International Quilt Study Center in Lincoln Nebraska, and will be traveling to Australia, France and a several other venues through 2017.
Sherri Lynn Wood
Workshops
Sherri Lynn Wood lives in Oakland, CA where she improvises quilts as a life practice and blogs about it at Daintytime.net. She has an MFA from Bard College and received the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painters and Sculptors in 2012. She is a MacDowell Colony fellow and a former instructor at Penland School of Craft. Her first book, The Improv Handbook For Modern Quilters, was released by STC Craft/Abrams in the Spring of 2015.
Casey York
Lecture
Casey York received her formal training in art history before turning to design. She is an avid quilter and designer, drawing her inspiration from masterpieces of the past as well as the contemporary world. Two of her quilts were included in the inaugural QuiltCon quilt show in 2013. Casey has released several stand alone patterns, and her work has been featured in Modern Quilts Unlimited, Interweave Stitch, and Generation Q. Her first book, Modern Appliqué Illusions, was released by Stash Books in fall, 2014. She lives in St. Louis with her husband and two sons.