I love to teach, and have done so for over 15 years on various topics ( marine conservation and marine life, Statistics and Biology,  computer programming). I enjoy giving back to the community through teaching. I teach quilt design and improvisational quilting classes to adults on a regular basis throughout the US and at international conferences.

Additionally, I have started my sewing and quilting classes to a younger audience (middle and high school). Sewing/Quilting is not always easily accessible, as it is expensive, so I will be providing machines and skills to reach all communities. 

I am thrilled to have an opportunity to share by teaching or speaking to your community. Please contact me for more information about rates and schedule. More information about me can be found here.

2023 – 2024 Workshop Engagements

Design Classes

Spark to Design (1 day, 6 hours)

Have you looked around your surroundings, something catches your eye, and you think: that could be a quilt design! In this class students will use pen and paper to explore designing their own modern quilt. Students start with a couple of warm-up design exercises to share in small groups and talk about what they saw. Now that creative design juices are flowing, students will use inspiration they have found in their surroundings. It could be a storm grate, architecture, a garden trellis, or anything else that has geometric influences. Students will then have a small group session, sharing their design, and discussing piecing techniques and possible color palettes for the quilt top.

Designing a Minimal Quilt (1 day, 6 hours)

Designing a minimal quilt is not as easy as it looks. It can take many edit + review cycles to get the right balance or interaction between objects (typically geometric in nature) and the space they reside in. This class will walk you through interpreting an image to a design, then we will work through a series of edit and review cycles fine-tuning your design. You will then have a chance to turn that design into a quilt top at your chosen size.

Quilt Classes

Improvisation: Shapes + Lines (1 day, 6 hours)

For such a seemingly free-spirited technique, improvisation can be difficult to get started. In this workshop, you make various lines and shapes that can be mixed to build your own improvisational composition. You will make some strip piecing using a brown bag method, play with scraps to make squares, triangles and curve shapes. You will use various techniques to audition and edit your composition to get the right balance of color and placement.

Art of Fabric Bending (1 day, 6 hours)

In this class, let us take a new look at strip piecing by folding in improvisation techniques and manipulating the fabrics to add soft curves or waves into our designs. You will design your own quilt layout using soft curves and start constructing your strip-pieced quilt, on the fly, with the aid of a design wall.

Scrappy Large Scale Piecing (1 day, 6 hours)

Do you ever wonder what to do with your scraps after you finish a quilt? Bring them along and in this workshop, we will walk through piecing and creating a quilt from your own scraps. We will look at design concepts that will help you use various scraps to put together a cohesive quilt. We’ll also discuss options for storing scraps.

Improvisation: Hand Piecing (1 day, 6 hours)

What is it like to hand piece a quilt top? Let’s explore piecing without modern equipment and create blocks using scissors to cut out our pieces and hand piece them together.  You will learn techniques to ensure your stitches hold over time, how to deal with improv. blocks and stitching them together, readying blocks to create a quilt top.

Piecing: Broken Trellis (1 day, 6 hours)

This class introduces the concept of curved piecing with templates* to create a broken trellis quilt using a pattern. The fabrics you use will give a different feel to the quilt so you can us this patten to play with patterns or solids fabrics or bold or more muted palettes.

*Temporary Templates using Freezer paper will be created in class but I highly recommend the template set by Bettycrockerass.com (you will need 2”, 3”, 5” and 6” templates)

Sewing Classes (Audience: Middle – High Schoolers)

Foundation Sewing Class (2 days, 12 hours | 4 days, 12 hours)

Young artists will be taught the basics of sewing using a sewing machine. This includes how to set-up and use a sewing machine, understand terms in patterns, different stitches and notions. A variety of projects will be provided so the students can practice and have works to take home to use.

Presentations

Trunk show (60-90 mins, Multi-media)

I create modern quilts with a variety of modern techniques and aesthetics, though embrace Improvisation and Minimalist styles. I like to think that the pieces I create, show others how I interpret what I see around me or what is happening in my community or what my own experiences are. I will continue to explore different ways in how to bring my emotions and connections to life using textiles. In this presentation, I walk through aspects of my process.

My Journey as an Artist (60 mins)

I did not go to an art school, so when I gave up my full-time day job to become a focus on art full-time I had a steep learning curve. The quilting world does not overlap a lot with the art world, which I was surprised by. This presentation walks through my journey as an emerging artist and what I learned.

Community Opportunities

I am also looking for opportunities within driving distance from NC, where I can donate both my time and skills helping the community with sewing projects or providing hourly support (including machines) where people would like to sew their own projects. It would be great if these opportunities could align with one of my workshop engagements (paid engagement). Save

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