Meet the Teachers
We take the time to search out the best in the industry, introducing you to exceptional designers, best-selling authors, creative thinkers and visionaries. Taking classes at Original Sewing & Quilt Expo adds to a memorable and satisfying experience.
Libby Ashcraft
Fort Worth, TX
libbyashcraft.com
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Libby has been teaching sewing, embroidery and embroidery software for over 20 years. She has specialized in embroidery software, but has recently expanded her expertise to include electronic cutters such as the Silhouette Cameo and Brother Scan 'N Cut. Libby is a Terri Johnson Creates Licensed Instructor and teaches the Silhouette Cameo at workshops and classes around the country. She teaches three software clubs a month in her local area, providing unique and detailed lessons for her students, with many lessons based on student requests. Libby is a presenter the All Things Silhouette Conference, Original Sewing & Quilt Expo events and other events. As a Martha Pullen Licensed teacher, Libby travels the U.S. helping bring the joy of sewing to many students. In addition to her teaching, Libby is a Technical Sewing Editor for Classic Sewing magazine.
Deb Atchison
Prosper, TX
debatchison.com/quilting.html
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Deb Atchison is an experienced educator, international technology consultant, and quilter that enjoys leading students of all ages through the process of creating beautiful works of art with fabric! Teaching is her lifelong career and quilting is her passion. Combining them both...her dream job! Deb has many years of training students of all ages including adult learners. As a technology education expert, Deb has taught numerous workshops virtually as well as face-to-face! She is certified in Scrappy Applique, and is a Legit Kits Ambassador and Educator and enjoys teaching quilters of all experience levels how to make beautiful works of art with Legit Kits! Deb enjoys sharing her love of applique using embroidery machines as well.
Melissa Bryan
Kentwood, LA
Melissa Bryan Designs / Big Bee Applique
melissabryandesigns.com
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Melissa is an embroidery designer, digitizer and owner of Melissa Bryan Designs. She has been a sewer and lover of all things handmade for over 30 years. She enjoys teaching others how to use machine embroidery designs to incorporate with sewing machine projects, such as table runners, quilts, placemats, and pillows, to create their own masterpieces. Her designs have been featured in Creative Machine Embroidery and she is a writer for an online sewing publication. She has been an educator at numerous shows, teaching both embroidery and quilting techniques.
Mendie Cannon
North Richland Hills, TX
bestitched.biz
Mendie has been stitching for over 40 years and is a member of three embroidery guilds. She has attended many seminars and taken classes in a variety of techniques. While she has tried many stitch techniques, Mendie found herself drawn to Brazilian Embroidery. She has also taken several finishing classes and does much of her own finishing in a variety of forms such as pin keeps, ornaments, biscornus, pincushions, stand-ups, boxes, pyramid/triangles, needle books and more. Mendie is a member of the Brazilian Dimensional Embroidery International Guild and has been since 2005. She attained her teacher certification in Brazilian Embroidery in 2007.
Mendie is retired from corporate work and spends much of her time teaching Brazilian Embroidery. She has regular classes locally and has taught at EGA chapters and seminars, BDEIG seminars, International Quilt Show in Houston, TX as well as other guilds and one on one.
Nick Coman
Ridgway, CO
Dragonfly Dyeworks
dragonflycreative.art
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Nick Coman has been teaching garment and quilt construction and design for almost 20 years. He has a degree in fashion design from FIDM in Los Angeles, and has written numerous articles for sewing publications and has a book on surface design. In addition to a private clientele, Nick is owns a retreat center in southwest Colorado that specializes in retreats for Fiber artists of all types.
Linda Davis
Hurst, TX
Sew It Up BERNINA
sewitup.com
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Linda has been inspiring the quilting community at Sew It Up for more than 13 years, sharing her sewing knowledge through teaching from our Quilt it Up Club over donuts & coffee, to virtual Zoom classes during the pandemic. She has lived in Washington, Michigan, California, and now Texas, where she is a busy Mom & Grandmother to twelve children. Outside of quilting, she loves spending time with her family, researching family history, and dolls. She uses her Bernina Q24 nearly every single day, and especially loves working with Lori Holt, Alison Glass & Tilda fabrics. Linda is responsible for creating so many beautiful samples for our store, and we are very fortunate to have such a kind and patient teacher here at Sew It Up!
Eric Drexler
Port Charlotte, FL
Sulky of America
sulky.com
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Eric has been in the industry over 40 years. Free-motion artistry has been his life-long passion. He has made numerous large and small works of machine art, some of which have been featured in Sulky Books and at Trade and Consumer Shows all over the country. Through his association with Sulky of America since the beginning, he has had the pleasure and honor of being inspired by some of the world's greatest creative sewers and quilters. Eric loves life and he loves to teach and share his exuberance for creative sewing. He is passionate about inspiring students of all ages so they can discover and enjoy a lifetime of creative fun. His infectious smile and warm humor puts everyone at ease and makes them ready and eager to learn. He is widely sought after to teach and share his contagious enthusiasm at Consumer shows, Sewing and Quilting Guilds and on many PBS shows.
Tamara Evans
Flower Mound, TX
Sewing has been a lifelong passion for Tamara. While raising her children, she discovered the limitless creative options of machine embroidery, software, quilting and began a home-based embroidered gift business. Coming back to the corporate arena as a professional in the sewing industry, focusing on new product development, creative project design, embroidery education and quilting with an embroidery focus was full circle. Her joy is education, publishing articles, teaching at trade shows, conventions, and other events. Her goal is to simplify the tedious and frustrating aspects and inspire creativity and confidence. Now, as an impartial independent expert, she will educate and inspire students of all skill levels.
Thomas Friedenbach
Hurst, TX
Sew It Up BERNINA
sewitup.com
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Tom is currently a Bernina technician at Sew It Up Bernina in Hurst, Texas. He has formerly worked as both a professional embroiderer and as a costumer with Travis Halsey in Chicago.
Lorraine Henry
San Diego, CA
Lorraine Henry for Conselle
conselle.com
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Lorraine is a specialist in sewing, fitting and pattern alteration for Conselle Institute of Image Management. With a degree in Clothing and Textiles she has been a university instructor. Teaching pattern alteration and fit is her favorite thing to do. She has done this at international sewing shows for many years. Her Two Easy Measuring tape set has been an aid for achieving good fit for fashion sewers throughout the world. With 40+ years experience as a custom dressmaker/tailor/teacher, she has a wealth of knowledge to share with you about sewing and fit.
Judy Kessinger
FitNice
fitnicesystem.com
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Judy Kessinger started her career traveling nationwide holding seminars for Hancock Fabrics for over 25 years. She also designed costumes for national and international figure skaters and created a fast and easy way to conquer fitting problems for that field.
Judy’s next goal was to make stress-free sewing with simple solutions for fitting. Her personal style included many relaxed, comfortable but well fitted outfits. In her search for the “perfect” pattern she decided to use her experience and create the system herself. The Master Tops and Master Pants patterns were born! Once you FIT the basic pattern, you create an entire wardrobe with 5 pattern pieces
With the addition of her remarkable books, Design It Yourself the techniques book, Simple Sewlutions and her newest, Top It Off, she has completed the perfect system.
She is known by many as the Fit Doctor, curing the ills of the sewing “blues”. Sewing is the easy part but it’s the FITTING that makes garments come alive and compliment the body instead of just covering it!
Judy has been blessed to have touched the lives of countless women, teaching them the tricks of looking trim and feeling fantastic by simply fitting themselves properly.
Heather Kojan
Owings Mills, MD
Heather Kojan Quilts
heatherkojan.com
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Heather has been sewing since her teens and quilting for more than 25 years. She considers herself a modern quilter, with traditional roots. Heather is the founder of the Baltimore Modern Quilt Guild and loves speaking to different groups and sharing the modern aesthetic. Foremost a teacher, she teaches modern quilting classes in local shops, guilds and shows across the country. Heather was a contributing author to the book Classic Modern Quilts and a featured quilter in The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters by Sherri Lynn Wood. You can also find her work in Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks magazine and Modern Patchwork magazine.
Michael Kralicek
Fort Worth, TX
Michael has been a figure in the sewing community for almost 30 years. His career started at Cloth World as a sales associate in 1993. He became a manager at the age of 21 and then continued with Jo-ann Fabrics for another 15 years. After too much of the corporate world he began a career in the sewing machine business. With encouragement from many customers he opened his own store in 2012. Michael has a passion for learners. He loves to see his students thrive in their creativity. He is a business owner, teacher, encourager, and overall fun guy to learn from.
Jill McCloy
Colorado Springs, CO
Jill McCloy Designs
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Jill's sewing career started at an early age – she received her first sewing machine for Christmas just after her fourth birthday. In high school, she did custom sewing and taught at fabric and sewing machine shops using original patterns. In 1992 Jill was hired by Viking Sewing Machines, Inc. as a national educator designing projects for the Viking Club and teaching at Viking World Conventions. She then became an independent educator working with many brands of sewing machines. Jill was featured in the Threads magazine design challenge in 2000, wrote for McCall’s and Threads magazines, designed embroideries for Cactus Punch and taught at many Expo events. Her specialties are machine knowledge and creating original designs. She has over 50 patterns and recently had a truly beautiful line of fabric come out with Northcott fabrics.
Linda McGehee
Shreveport, LA
Ghee's
ghees.com
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Designer, Linda McGehee has a diverse sewing background with 50 years experience from garments to handbags, piecing to heirloom, surface manipulation to combining a variety of methods into a sampler of various techniques. Linda has traveled the globe demonstrating and lecturing from her books and patterns. She is much sought after at trade and machine conventions, consumer shows, guilds, shops & television. Her style is easy and fun with a flair for detail.
Kathy McMakin
Birmingham, AL
Classic Sewing Magazine
Hoffman Media
classicsewingmagazine.com
thesewingcollection.com
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Kathy McMakin is one of America’s foremost authorities in the field of heirloom sewing by machine and by serger. She is the editorial director of Classic Sewing magazine, and she teaches beginning and advanced sewers from every corner of the world and inspires a new level of confidence in her students. As the team leader and instructor for the Classic Sewing Teacher Licensing Program for both face-to-face and online curriculums, she can be found designing, serging, sewing and writing instructions on almost every day of the week.
She has been a guest instructor at events for every major sewing machine manufacturer in the world. She has authored several smocking, sewing and serging books and has produced and appeared in numerous sewing and serging videos. Her guest appearances on sewing television shows are many. Kathy lives in Birmingham, Alabama, with her husband and has two grown children and three absolutely precious grandchildren.
Tana Mueller
Crowley, TX
Designs by Tana
designsbytana.com
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Tana Mueller is a Designaholic and crayon art enthusiast. Opening a new box of crayons, with their own unique colorful fresh smell, quickly motivates her to begin work on her next project. Tana has been coloring and drawing since age three. She started drawing her own artwork designs in 1986, through "designs by tana". Tana is a native Texan and specializes in western, country and farmhouse designs related to childhood experiences or memories. Tana crayon technique to creates beautiful artwork. The “Magic” is in the Blending! Tana also specializes in “Stitchless Applique,” with her technique no stitching is required.
Rhonda Pierce
Willowbrook, IL
Schmetz Needles
SCHMETZneedles.com
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Rhonda Pierce has a dream job. . . teaching sewing enthusiasts about the hardest working 2” piece of steel in the sewing machine – the SCHMETZ needle. After presenting 200+ virtual classes, she is happy to meet stitch fans in-person. Rhonda created and published 100 issues of SCHMETZ Inspired to SEW. She publishes the must read SCHMETZneedles monthly newsletter. She is a certificated FitNice System Instructor. Her quilt, Color Splash, hung at three International Quilt Festivals. Rhonda’s personal blog is www.SewMoreStitches.com. With quilt shop, wholesale management experience, and the love of sewing, Rhonda delivers a unique perspective as VP Marketing Director of Euro-notions, and Spokesperson for SCHMETZneedles.com North America.
Kate Quinn
Albuquerque, NM
FabriKated Quilts
Sew Steady Education Ambassador and Westalee Design Acredited Teacher
fabrikatedquilts.com
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Kate's fascination with quilting began when she received a Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt as a wedding present in 1991. She made her first quilt to celebrate the birth of her first child and has loved quilting ever since. Kate loves all styles and types of quilts from art to modern and traditional pieced to applique, and how quilting is a connection through the ages and across generations.
Originally a native of California, Kate graduated from West Point in 1991 and served in the Army with her husband Patrick. She left the service in 1998 to be at home with the couple's five children. For the next two decades, quilting
became the bridge that helped her to build relationships in each new community as she moved more than twenty times during her family's military service.
After their last move, Kate began working and teaching at local shops and guilds on a consistent basis. In
2016, she became a professional longarm quilter, opening FabriKated Quilts. When she was first introduced to Westalee Design’s Quilting Rulers and Templates she was instantly hooked! Rulerwork tools have helped Kate advance her quilting skills more than she ever dreamt possible. The freedom and creativity generated by these tools is so satisfying, and Kate wants to give that power to quilters everywhere. She loves sharing her passion for quilting and art, passing on a centuries old tradition, and creating beautiful items of comfort.
Catherine Redford
Naperville, IL
catherineredford.com
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Catherine Redford was born in England where she learned to knit and sew as a young girl. After relocating from London to Naperville, Illinois, she learned to quilt and never looked back. She's an award-winning quilter, an active member of her local guilds, and a popular teacher at the local and national level. Catherine is a frequent magazine contributor and has enjoyed being a guest on Quilting Arts TV. She is enjoying the resurgence of interest in handwork with an embroidery book, Butterfly Stitches, published Fall 2020, and, with two DVDs and a book on Modern Machine Quilting techniques, Catherine delights in finishing her own quilts on a domestic machine.
Kathy Ruddy
Mukilteo, WA
kathyruddy.com
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Kathy is an international sewing celebrity, educator, pattern designer, Serger and fitting expert. Active in the sewing industry since 1962, she is the star of 10 Serger and sewing videos and author of 12 Serger and sewing booklets and her new enhanced books on CD called Three ways to Learn CD'S. You can look at pictures of her projects from start to finish, read the words next to the pictures as you listen to Kathy impart her wisdom and experiences as she develops her projects. If you like a hard copy you can print off as many pages from the CD as you like. Her specialty is to show how to sew and serge fast and easy without sacrificing quality, fit or fashion details. Her fresh, fun classes are brimming with surprises and ideas.
Annie Smith
Fort Worth, TX
Award Winning Quilter, BERNINA Ambassador & Aurifil Artisan
anniesmith.net
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Annie Smith is a quilt imagineer, author, national and international quilt instructor and a podcaster. She walked in to a quilt shop in 1984 to buy a new sewing machine and walked out with an invitation to teach quilting classes. You could say that Annie’s life is filled with quilts, and she knows a thing or two about quilting. Machine Applique, Color and Fabric Selection are Annie’s passion and expertise. Give Annie cloth, a sewing machine, thread and a great pair of scissors and she turns out spectacular pieces — from prom dresses to quilts to intricate appliqué coats. A life-long Californian, Annie now resides with her family in Justin, Texas.
Jim Suzio
Pittsburgh, PA
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Jim Suzio is an award winning artist, designer, digitizer and sewing instructor (including embroidery software, heirloom, fashion and serger sewing). A self taught sewer, Jim was inspired to try the craft after watching a neighbor's enthusiasm in the art. A new sales position at a machine dealer found him literally "thrown" on stage at an ASG convention where he was discovered by Sue Hausmann, host of the PBS series "America Sews with Sue Hausmann." Jim soon found himself teaching all over the US, Canada and Australia for Husqvarna Viking and Pfaff Sewing Machine Companies. His work has been featured in numerous books and magazines and several ads for Husqvarna Viking and the launch of Ty Pennington's new fabric line. he has been seen on several television programs here ("America Sews with Sue Hausmann,"and "It's Sew Easy") and in Canada ("the Big Breakfast Show").
Joe Vecchiarelli
Glendale, CA
French European Dress Forms
frencheuropeaninc.com
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Joe Vecchiarelli, founder and president of French European Inc., has worked in the fashion industry for over 40 years. During his college years, Joe worked in the family business, sharpening scissors for the industry's top designers. He later graduated from USC's business program and began to realize that opportunities in the apparel business were unlimited. Mr. Vecchiarelli's career took another fascinating turn when he made a foray into the entertainment business working in production with shows like Dancing with the Stars and The X Factor. A few years ago he was approached by NBC to help produce the competitive design talent show, Fashion Star. Presently Mr. Vecchiarelli is ever so busy maintaining his business and helping fashion students and enthusiasts grasp their dreams and become successful within the industry.
Alicia Welcher
Heron, MT
Classic Sewing Magazine
aliciawelcher.com
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Alicia is a designer, author and sewing instructor who specializes in heirloom and serger sewing. She has appeared Martha's Sewing Room with Martha Pullen and has published countless projects under the Martha Pullen Company label. As a beginning and advanced instructor at the Classic Sewing Teacher Licensings and events throughout the country, she has earned a following of devoted sewists. She is also the Assistant Editor of and a contributing designer for Classic Sewing magazine.
Joline Wunderl
Southlake, TX
Sew It Up BERNINA
sewitup.com
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Joline Wunderl is a lifelong sewing enthusiast with a special fondness for sewing for herself and her daughter. She spent many years teaching middle and high school English. In 2015, she happily merged interest and experience and became an educator at Sew It Up Bernina. Now an experienced and enthusiastic machine embroiderer, she enjoys teaching students at all levels the amazing things they can do with their embroidery machines!