Quilting Class Teachers

Cheryl Barnes

Cheryl Barnes began Golden Threads as a Longarm quilting business in the early 90’s. She expanded the business and began publishing quilting designs by many talented designers. Cheryl travels and teaches at shows and shops helping quilters learn how to choose and use quilting designs. Along the way she saw the need and developed a selection of “gotta” have notions and “gotta” learn techniques. Cheryl has authored books, filmed educational videos for several sewing machine and frame companies. Her goal is to help all quilters – Be Confident – Be Creative – Have Fun and Quilt!

Patricia Barry

Patricia Barry is a professional quilter who loves to share her knowledge with others. Pat is a regular contributor to On Track!, IMQA’s quarterly trade magazine, recently completing a series of articles on Business Plans. She is the author of ABCs of Longarm Quilting, a ‘must have’ for new quilters. She wrote the user manual for the Statler Stitcher® / CreativeStudio™ software and is a certified trainer. Her newest endeavor is working with Creative Grids® to designing a complete line of quilting machine templates called Sweet Set™. You will see her at most major quilt shows, either teaching or demonstrating new, innovative products.

Irena Bluhm

Irena Bluhm is a longarm quilter since November 2004. She is teaching at many major venues in United States, including Quilter’s Society shows and International Quilt Festival in Houston along with private workshops nationwide and abroad.

Irena is internationally acclaimed award winning longarm quilter, instructor, author, and pattern designer.

With 18 years of garment making/design and 12 years of doing fine art for a hobby she applies her experience on to making quilts for exhibits exclusively. She is an author of eight books and five workbooks, a winner of 60 awards in national and international quilt contests thus far.

Some awards were won at the most prestigious quilt contests nationwide: AQS show in Paducah and Nashville, IQF in Houston, Road to California, PIQF, MAQF, DNQF, IHQS, QO, QTW, MQS, MQX, HMQS, NQA, RMQF, and Innovations, to name just a few. Irena started teaching just after a little over one year into longarm quilting. Her passion and enthusiasm for quilting is contagious. She loves and enjoys sharing her knowledge with others.

Debby Brown

Debby learned to quilt after her youngest child was born and was instantly hooked. After hand quilting many quilts for herself and for others, she started her long-arm quilting business. Over 2,000 quilts later, she still finds new inspiration and ideas daily and looks forward to the promise of each new quilt top. As a Handi Quilter Educator, she delights in teaching new quilters and watching them discover their own style of quilting. Debby’s first book, Beyond the Lines, was published in 2009. Debby and her husband make their home in New York.

Kim Brunner

Voted ‘Machine Quilting Teacher of the Year’ by her students, Kimmy Brunner is a third generation quilter who has made it a goal to bring her family's quilting history into the future. Her work has won multiple national and international level awards and has been featured in numerous books, magazines and calendars. Nominated five times for Teacher of the Year, and known for her beautiful quilting and crazy sense of humor, her style combines laughter with years of experience. She produces top-rated instructional DVDs for midarmers and longarmers alike, digitized patterns for computerized quilters, and high quality quilting aids and tools. A frequent contributor to quilting industry publications and the author of the ask-the-expert column ‘Ask Kimmy!’, she teaches jam-packed classes at major machine quilting shows. Still sane (sort of) despite having two teenagers, she lives in Minnesota with her family, spoiled rotten dogs, and an alarming stash of fabric. Visit her website at www.Kimmyquilt.com for more information.

Caron Carlson

Caron Carlson has been quilting for 8 years, although she had sewn her whole life. When she discovered quilting, it was like a duck to water. Within a year she was teaching locally and got her longarm and started quilting for others in 2005. She has won awards at such shows as MQS and IQA in Chicago. But her real love is teaching others, and loves to see the light bulb go on for a student. Valley Quilt Studio is her (busy) business, and she also authors quilt patterns for piecing and designs for digitizing.

Mindy Caspersen

Mindy Wylie Caspersen has been a professional machine quilter for more than nine years. She has produced several machine quilting instructional DVD’s and created patterns and tools for machine quilting. She is known for her work with templates and her fun, easy-going teaching style. In 2005 she began a Yahoo! Online discussion group called FunQuilters, and in 2006 she opened a second group called Machine Quilting Systems Group (MQSG). She owns and operates Angel Threads Quilting, LLC, and is an internationally recognized instructor and a representative for Nolting Manufacturing, Inc. Mindy resides in Maryland and Pennsylvania with her children. You can visit Mindy online at www.angelthreadsquilting.com or www.atqsales.com

Dawn Cavanaugh

Dawn’s custom freehand quilting has been winning awards for herself and her clients since 1994. Teaching others how to be successful machine quilters has been her passion as well. Honored by being named the Machine Quilters Expo Teacher of the Year for 2008, Dawn continues to inspire others at such venues as MQX, MQ Innovations, Australasian Machine Quilters Show, Canadian Machine Quilters Show, Longarm University, Quilting on the Waterfront, and many regional domestic and longarm guilds across the world. Dawn has taught at MQS for 12 years straight, and continues to share her expertise in national publications such as Fons and Porter’s Love of Quilting and On Track magazine. Her current position as National Education Director of APQS allows her to keep in contact with new and experienced quilters, and help them develop a love for their craft, just as she has.

Doug Creasy

Doug Creasy co-owns and operates with wife Martha, A Touch of Thread Quilting Gallery, a full service Gammill Longarm Dealership in Zanesville, OH. Doug's six years in the US Navy in the position of Electrician's Mate 1st Class, and the following 23 years ending as Shop Foreman at Electric Motor and Service, responsible for electrical and mechanical repairs for large industrial plants is serving him well in his new occupation. It comes naturally to Doug to assemble, maintain and repair longarm machines. He can't remember a time when he didn't have some kind of assembly or repair tool in his hand. Coupled with his hobby of computers, it was natural for Doug to love the Gammill, and then the Statler Stitcher. In the beginning, his position was to be that of a helper on weekends. After using all of his vacation days and whatever other days he could get, he still could not keep up with the demands of this growing business, so he resigned his full time job to take on a bigger full time job. In addition to being responsible for set-up, assembly, all repair and maintenance, as well as some introductory classes to computerized quilting with the Statler Stitcher

Dustin Farrell

Dusty is a longarm quilt artist. He has been drawing and painting ever since he can remember. For him quilting is a wonderful way for him to express his art. Dusty’s work is 100% freehand, no panograms, no marking the quilts, no computer generated designs. He is continually going to classes and shows to help develop his own unique style. Dusty will continue to travel with Nolting Manufacturing again in 2010. Dusty’s sketchbook is never out of reach. Dusty has also quilted for several nationally known designers and his work has appeared in several magazines. Dusty and his wife own a quilt shop in NW Pennsylvania where Dusty spends his days and sometimes nights working on customer quilts and shop projects occasionally finding time to work on something for himself.

Renae Haddadin

Renae Haddadin is an award winning quilter, author and teacher. She began quilting by hand in 1990, and added longarm machine quilting to her repertoire in 2001. She loves the creative process of quilting and enjoys the challenge of staying fresh and unique for each quilt. Renae loves to tackle all types of quilting, piecing and other techniques to enhance her quilts. Her classes reflect this love. In her classes she brings a sense of energy and fun to quilting. She has a definite talent for helping others understand the process of combining artistic ideas with logical problem solving. She helps her students gain a “whole quilt” perspective that helps improve their everyday quilting. Many students comment that Renae has a way of making what initially seems difficult, seem remarkably easy.

Michael Holodnak

Mike Holodnak has been a longarm quilter for 8 years, dealer for Nolting for 2 years and has been trained in maintenance and operations of Nolting machines at the Factory.

Page Johnson

Page Johnson is a professional longarm quilter from Minnesota. She quilts full time for customers and is experienced in both freehand and computerized quilting. Over the years her award winning quilts have gained her national recognition in shows and publications. Page is a Statler Creative Studio teacher, one of her greatest joys is to challenge herself to constantly find new ways to see how she can use Creative Studio to its utmost potential and share it with her students.

Page has found exciting new ways to incorporate an old friend, The Pattern Grid into her computerized quilting. The Piece O’ Grid (from Colorado quilting company) has quickly become her favorite studio tool.

Page also produces tutorial videos for Statler quilters. It is just one more way to teach others and share her love of quilting. There are samples of her work and videos at www.thequiltingpage.com

DeLoa Jones

DeLoa Jones brings the experience of 30+ years of quilting. She started her Longarm business in 1999 and is still quilting customer quilts when she is home. She has been teaching her Longarm techniques for 7 years and enjoys sharing with everyone her designs and knowledge of the business and the machine quilting. DeLoa’s quilts and customer quilts have won national awards and she is the author of 5 books. DeLoa along with her husband Dave represent APQS and Compuquilter. They also sell lights and other accessories for many models of machines. DeLoa is the mother of 8 children of which two teenage girls are still at home along with 1 dog and 7 cats.

Richard King

Richard has worked with longarm machines for 12 years and has been fulltime with Prodigy for five years, building machines, selling and doing the Prodigy tech support.

Linda Lawson

Linda Lawson has been longarm quilting since 2001. She has been computerized for 6 years and has followed and contributed to the pulse of the longarm quilting industry through her website of www.longarmchat.com since 2002. Linda owns Blue Ribbon Quilt Co., in Monroe Ohio. She has been selling, training and installing Intelliquilters since 2007. In December of 2009 she was awarded her 3^rd Gold Star as an IQ dealer through Kasa engineering and has consistently rated #1 in sales two years in a row. While not on the road with training and installations, she also runs a prolific t-shirt quilt business (www.t-shirt-quilts.com) producing more than 200 quilts a year. For more on Blue Ribbon Quilt Co., please visit the about us link on our website www.blueribbonquiltco.com

Kathy McCarty

Kathy McCarty, an award winning professional longarm quilter from Ohio, began quilting in 1966 on a part time basis. Kathy's personalization of quilting to the quilt design soon made her in great demand by numerous quilters, including those competing in regional and national competitions.

In 2002 Kathy opened her business, "A Thread Runs Through It. LLC." Rarely following a pattern, Kathy prefers instead to use her artistic talent in doing custom work, personalizing each individual quilt.

In addition to longarm quilting, Kathy also provides lectures to guilds and other groups, and finds time to teach quilting classes. Her lectures provide incredible insight about the relationship between the quilt maker and the quilter. Quilt makers and quilters benefit from the insights gained to make every future quilt a work of art.

Linda McCuean

After 20 years of hand quilting, Linda began quilting on a Gammill longarm quilting machine. Her quilts have won top honors at many national and international quilt shows in the 11 years since. Linda’s quilt, Bella, was granted Masterpiece Quilt status by the National Quilting Association in 2007. Linda enjoys traveling to teach longarm quilting techniques, judge shows, and enjoy the company of quilters everywhere! Linda and her husband, Don, live in New Galilee, PA.

Karen McTavish

Karen McTavish has been teaching professionally since 2000 – she has been quilting on a longarm since 1997 fulfilling her two passions: Heirloom Trapunto quilting and Wholecloth. Karen specializes in crafting award-winning quilts using techniques, which allow any machine quilters to replicate traditional “hand-quilted” effects. She has been featured on Simply Quilts and writes articles for national quilting magazines and journals. Karen is the author of 5 books, Quilting for Show 1 & 2, Whitework Quilting, Mastering the Art of McTavishing, and Secrets of Elemental Quilting. She has been a full time professional quilter since 1997 – supporting her family through her craft. Karen lives on Lake Superior’s north shore, quilting and teaching throughout the country and privately in her storefront, “McTavish Quilting Studio”. She has two children, Ally and Storm. Her website, storefront and gallery is at www.designerquilts.com

Linda Miller

Computers and Quilting are natural partners for Linda, who had a corporate career in computers in the 80’s and “retired” into quilting in the 90’s. Linda’s interests and enthusiasm extend into Quilt Show Judging as well as teaching. Linda resides in NE Ohio and keeps busy with her longarm business and supportive family

Sue Patten

Sue Patten of Ontario Canada has been traveling throughout Canada, the United States and Europe teaching and educating the art of longarm quilting since 2001. She now tours with The Wild Women of Quilting doing hands on classes, lecture demos and a wonderful trunk show. Her unique style of quiting has won both herself and her clients many awards and ribbons. She is an AQS Author of Quilting Possibilities…Freehand Filler Patterns, Sue has had her work appear on magazine covers and been featured in many other authors books. She has appeared on such TV shows as America Sews with Sue Hausmann, The Quilt Show with Ricky Tims and Alex Anderson and Linda Taylor Quilts. She designs patterns for Golden Threads, Husqvarna, Viking, and Pfaff, Cactus Punch. She has a new book set to be released by AQS, stencil collections, and her work has been digitized for longarm and domestic computerized systems. Sue’s high energy classes and unique free motion designs are sure to inspire you to quilt outside the box and let your quilting reflect who you really are

Diana Phillips

Diana Phillips has been quilting for over 30 years. Pursuing her fascination of color and design, Diana has pieced and quilted hundreds of her own quilts as well as quilting many more for clients. Since 1994, Diana has used a longarm to finish quilts. Diana, an award winning quilter, self-published the very first series of books dedicated to freehand quilting. With co-author Jodi Robinson, Diana created another series of quilting design books titled "Quilting Variations". Visit Diana's website Cozy-Creations.com, to view samples of her work.

Bob Purcell

Bob Purcell is President and owner of Superior Threads and the only self-certified master thread therapist in the world. He worked in Japan for 10 years and speaks fluent Japanese. He graduated from Brigham Young University with a Masters Degree in Business Administration in 1984. His background is in product development, customer service, and quality control. He taught for many years at a private school and also at the college level. Since 1999 he has educated thousands within our industry and has had many articles published in various industry magazines. He got involved in the thread business to support his wife’s (Mother Superior) quilting addiction. And he knows most of the places women stash fabric.

Bona Robinson

Bona has worked as a CPA for many years both in a tax department and in computer installation/training for various CPA firms’ clients using a variety of integrated accounting packages. She has taught university-level computer, accounting, and tax classes since receiving her Masters degree. In addition, she and her husband have owned several businesses over the years giving her ‘live’ experience in small business daily operations. Bona has been using Quickbooks in her longarm business for ten years and has completely customized the setup for specific needs of the longarm business owner. Bona owns a statler stitcher and is very familiar with software for use with the computerized systems as well as embroidery systems to enhance their functionality.

Jodi Robinson

2010 marks Jodi's 14th year as a longarm quilter. She travels nationally to teach hands-on and demo classes at longarm quilting shows, as well as other shows and LA Dealerships. Jodi's quilts are consistent winners at both national and local shows, always showcasing new and innovative quilting designs. Her cutting edge quilting encompasses the latest in use of multiple colors of thread, and elaborate stitching. Together with Diana Phillips, Jodi co-authored Quilting Variations, a five book series on various long-arm techniques. She has self-published six long-arm quilting books. The latest, Less Stress Feathers, was released in 2006. This innovative approach has revolutionized the quilting of feathers, easily and beautifully. Jodi's books and classes focus on using quick and easy methods to create unique freehand designs that personalize each and every quilt. In addition to her teaching and writing schedule, Jodi is a professional longarm quilter, who enjoys a wide customer base in Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio.

Mari-Lee Seei

Mari-Lee has a contagious enthusiasm for quilting. She has demonstrated ruler techniques informally as the owner of Off the Edge Quilting while traveling and attending quilting events all over the United States. Mari-Lee has a practical approach to creativity combining analytical skills with artistic appreciation. Her enthusiasm for quilting and dynamic personality promotes a sharing of ideas and sparks a “can do” energy in the classroom.

Patricia Simons

Patricia discovered the joy of quilting after completing her second quilt while attending a WonderCut retreat by Alice Walter and Deb Hopkins) designers of the WonderCut rulers). The Lone Star quilt is usually on display in the Quilter’s Rule show booth. As Quilter’s Rule developed the Design Tools line, Patricia has developed a knack for designing different quilting patterns to fit each individual quilt. She demonstrates the techniques at shows and has begun teaching a class called “Unlocking Your Creativity (The Key is Templates)”. She has instituted “Design Basics 101”, which are step by step instructions using design templates to create your own patterns, hosted on the internet at www.quiltersrule.com. She looks forward to sharing her techniques to help you develop your own style and expertise. Patricia represents the family owned and operated business, Quilter’s Rule, and attends over 20 quilting shows a year.

Sandra Soni

A career, which started on a Singer Treadle has taken Sandra Soni, of North Canton, Ohio, through handwork and many kinds of machines to reach her current APQS longarm. Learning to sew as a youngster, then attending Kent State School of Fashion Design, Sandra has developed a style of design and quilting which sets her work apart from her peers. In national competitions, her award winning art quilts hold the viewers in awe, and always wanting to know, “How does she do that?”

Viewers find it difficult to conceive that such miniature designs could be quilting on a longarm quilting machine, without the aid of computer.

Sandra has specialized in commissioned works, with large corporations vying for her very original one-of-a-kind pieces. One corporation, who is a sponsor of varied art shows, has presented her pieces to international recipients involved in the art world.

Shirley Stutz

Southern Ohio native, Shirley Stutz, began a new career in quilting, after retiring from the United State Department of Agriculture. Her organizational and speaking skills were easily transferred to the new career, as she found a love of teaching, writing, designing and speaking in the quilting world. Her work, which encompasses hand, DSM, longarm machine and now computerized quilting, is found in many national shows, as well as various art gallery exhibitions. Several pieces were chosen for the exhibition, “Women in Fiber: From Craft to Art” at Hermann Fine Arts Center in Marietta, Ohio. The Holmes County Amish quilters honored her by exhibiting 117 of her quilts in a solo exhibition, which drew thousands of quilters from multiple states.

She contributes articles to several publications; her book, “Easy and Elegant Lone Star Quilts” has transitioned quilters to using large-scale prints to create new and exciting designs. Shirley teaches and presents her entertaining lectures to guilds and shows throughout U.S. and Canada. Shirley can be reached at: shirleystutz@windstream.net

Linda Thielfoldt

Linda Thielfoldt, owner of The Quilted Goose learned to sew at an early age and made her first skirt at age 9 and her first quilt at 12. She has been quilting for over 36 years and brings a wealth of experience to the classroom. She has won blue ribbons at many national shows for her machine quilting and wearable art. Linda operates The Quilted Goose in her hometown of Troy, Michigan and her machine quilting skills are in demand by quilters from all over the US.

Linda has been teaching quilting for over 16 years and loves to share her knowledge. Her classes are taught in a no-rules fun and lively style that will provide inspiration and new ideas on how to improve your machine quilting. Linda was Top Teacher of the Year 2009 finalist by The Professional Quilter Magazine and is the featured guest teacher at Accomplish Quilting a Gammill/Statler dealer in MI where she specializes in teaching feathers and being fearless with your quilting.

Several years ago Linda started designing patterns for computerized quilting machines and her patterns are available in many formats through www.legacyquilting.com

Linda has been the MC for the MQS/Hobbs Fashion show for the past several years and also writes educational articles for On Track magazine, which is published by the International Machine Quilters Association. She also serves as a Director on the Board for IMQA Foundation and through that organization works to further the education of machine quilters all across the US. Linda MC’s the annual IMQA Foundation Audacious Auction for Education and is proud of the fact that quilting community supports the Foundation by donating quilts which are auctioned to raise money for grants and scholarships.

Patsy Thompson

Patsy Thompson has been quilting since the 1970’s and began machine quilting in 2001. She prefers traditional “push through” quilting on a home domestic sewing machine and travels to teach this method. She has published 8 instructional DVDs on various free motion quilting topics and has written articles for Machine Quilting Unlimited. Patsy is probably known best for her feather designs and hyperquilting technique and has two books, Hyperquilting! and Feather Adventures! that are due to be released in 2010. She divides her time between homes in Holland, Ohio and Asheville, North Carolina.

Gayle Wallace

Gayle came to quilting by way of her love of sewing. She started sewing at the age of 5, making doll clothes. After taking a beginner quilting class in 1985, she has shared her love of quilting with over 4,000 students. Gayle is an award winning quilter with wins in Houston (IQA), Paducah (AQS), Dallas (DQA), National Quilters Assoc. (NQA), Road to California, Heritage Quilters, Lancaster, Quilting on the Waterfront, Manchester NH (MQX), Kansas City (MQS), Salt Lake City, (HMQS) and a number of other shows. Her work has been published in numerous magazines and books.

Jamie Wallen

Jamie Wallen entered the Quilting Community with a background in Fine Arts. After a long arm purchase in the late nineties he began to develop his own style of quilting, during this time he developed a large and loyal community of piecers Throughout the USA that "Wanted him to put his unique style of work on their quilts". Eventually, he began mentoring new quilters in his area. It was during this period that he met and became friends with Nichole Webb with whom he collaborated and released the book "No Boundaries" which includes Jamie's TM design "Flurry Of Angels". In 2004 Jamie began teaching workshops and classes throughout the US. In 2005 Jamie began "Heading back to his Roots of Fine Art "WITH" the long arm". He has developed a new series of quilting technique's he calls "Thread fusion”, and continues to teach nationally. 2005 also brought Jamie into a new Studio where he works and teaches workshops in Kalamazoo Michigan. Jamie is presently also collaborating with Fine Artist Patrick Whalen on original hand dyed artist's cloth for long arm quilters use in artist's whole cloths. As Jamie says's "I've found my home in the quilting community, and I'm going to explore 'every' room".

Sheri Wood

Sheri started machine quilting in the mid 1970’s – before machine quilting was cool. She worked on her domestic machine until moving to a longarm in 2001. She quilts for customers at The Village Smithy in Bishop Hill, IL and has designed the Nautilus Tools for quilting that she markets through White Robin Designs. She loves traveling around the country to quilt shows and shops, sharing her expertise and exchanging ideas with quilters everywhere.