Kate Ward (Your Host)

Boro-Inspired Peekaboo Pouch

Kate Ward is an Australian interdisciplinary artist, curator and educator with over twenty years experience working and teaching in the Arts. Her interests include ceramics, jewelry, printmaking, and intermedia, but her heart lies with textile arts, and she’s been stitching avidly for about ten years.

Kate’s been able to combine her love of art with her love of travel, studying and creating all over the world, including participating in an exchange at Kyoto Seika University - a dream for someone with Kate’s fascination and respect for Japanese culture and aesthetics.

Prompted by her passions for textiles, sustainability, and living meaningfully, Kate started focusing on Zen Stitching in 2020. By embracing the beautiful and practical designs of sashiko stitching, Kate is not only mending clothes, but also reducing textile waste and practicing mindfulness.

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Alison Dawson

Textile Bauble Bead Necklace

Alison Dawson is a jewelry designer who creates lightweight sculptural pieces that combine textiles with contemporary design. Her work reimagines nontraditional materials into forms that feel effortless yet expressive celebrating texture, movement and an interplay between softness and structure. Each piece is handcrafted in small batches, reflecting a commitment to thoughtful, making and timeless style. 

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Amanda Trought

Mixed Media Trinket Tags: Introduction

Amanda is a Mixed Media & Fiber Artist whose work has been showcased in both group and solo exhibitions across London, Barbados, US Virgin Islands, and Montserrat. Her art, which spans various collections worldwide, has earned her a variety of awards, for her sculptural art and textile wall hangings. Amanda's artwork uses diverse materials, including clay, fabric, recycled elements, collage, and art journaling. Through these mediums, Amanda crafts stories, utilizing color and texture to evoke emotion and connection, and is committed to exploring how art and creativity impact on health and well-being.

In addition to her artistic pursuits, Amanda is an educator, teaching on her own course platform Realityarts Academy as well as contributing to other hosted courses. She writes for her website and blogs and produces weekly content for her YouTube channels sharing her expertise in art, creativity, and gardening, continuously inspiring and nurturing creativity in others.

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Amy Maricle

Mini Watercolor Leaves: Beautiful Botanicals Made Simple

Amy Maricle is an artist,  art therapist, and author who is fascinated by the connections between nature and art. She guides students to slow down and co-create with nature, using a playful, creative process. Her membership, The Gathering, helps students get beyond creative block to build a joyful daily art practice grounded in drawing, painting, and art journaling.

Amy is the author of Draw Yourself Calm: Draw Slow, Stress Less. She has been featured in The New York Times.com, The Times London, The Washington Post.com and others. 

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BB Henry

Hand Stitched Franken Fabrics

BB has always felt a deep-rooted need to create and work with her hands. What began with sewing and quilting soon expanded into an endless curiosity for any medium she could explore. Over the years, she’s found her artistic home in mixed media art journaling, blending textiles, paper, and intuitive stitching to add rich texture and depth. She loves experimenting with techniques and materials that don’t traditionally “go together,” embracing creative problem-solving through play.

BB’s happiest moments are spent sharing her knowledge and guiding others to break through perfectionism, trust their artistic intuition, and create with joy. Her work is fuelled by the belief that art is most powerful when it’s personal, playful, and unapologetically your own.

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Cass Merrigan

From Flat to Form: Welcome to 3D EPP!

Meet Cass, the creative behind the makes at Cake & Ale. By day, she works as a full-time graphic designer, combining her passion for packaging design with a love of hand sewing and traditional English Paper Piecing (EPP). Her unique 3D creations blend modern design with traditional techniques, celebrating craftsmanship, creativity, and the joy of making by hand. With a focus on scrap-friendly, time-friendly projects, Cass loves helping makers transform small fabric treasures into beautiful, practical pieces that are both achievable and inspiring.

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Clarissa Grandi

Draw and Stitch an Alhambra Star Pattern

Clarissa is a geometric artist, author, and experienced teacher whose passion is introducing beginner artists to the truly accessible art of geometry. She delights in sharing her ideas, materials, and techniques with others, and her background in mathematics teaching enables her to demonstrate and explain difficult concepts simply and clearly. In her own artmaking she enjoys exploring the interplay between the precision of human-made geometry and the more organic and chaotic geometries and symmetries found in nature. She often includes paper stitching in her work, where it complements and enhances the geometry of her mixed media pieces.

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Darcy Hunter

Painting Fabric for Stitching using Watercolor and Inktense

Darcy Hunter is a New Brunswick - based textile and mixed media artist whose work is deeply inspired by the natural world. With a background in Biological Sciences, she brings close observation and a strong sense of place to her creative practice. Drawing on photographs gathered from the landscapes around her, Darcy translates fleeting moments into expressive textile compositions. Her process combines fabric manipulation, free - motion machine embroidery, hand stitching, layered textures, and upcycled fabrics to create richly detailed works that evoke movement and atmosphere. A juried member of Craft NB and Studio Art Quilt Associates, Darcy has received grants from ArtsNB and Artists in Schools, completed artist residencies, and exhibited her work across Canada. Her pieces are held in private collections throughout North America. She also draws on her education degree to share her practice through teaching, online classes, speaking engagements, and published articles.

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Deanne Fitzpatrick Rug Hooking Studio

 The Traditional Rose Coaster

Deanne Fitzpatrick is a renowned artist and writer who believes that rug hooking and creativity deepens and enriches lives. She has exhibited widely including two solo exhibits at The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Deanne has written ten books, received an honorary doctorate from Mount Saint Vincent University and was awarded The Order of Canada for her contribution to advancement rug hooking as an art form. 

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Donna Davies

An Introduction to Kinusaiga

Donna is a designer, maker, and workshop tutor with a love of stitching, storytelling, and folk-inspired design. Through her brand, Make Your Own Happy, she creates mindful craft kits and teaches welcoming workshops that encourage creativity as a form of self-care. Her work blends cosy, handmade charm with accessible techniques, helping others discover the joy of making.

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Ellie Fisher

Spooky Stone Weaving

Ellie Fisher is a weaver and the founder of Elka Textiles, a weaving and natural dye studio based in Hampshire. She spent much of her childhood living abroad, the vibrant markets of the Middle and Far East giving her a lasting interest in colour, texture and pattern that still shapes her work today.

Ellie holds both a BA in Textile Design and an MA in Design for Textile Futures, from Central Saint Martins, graduating in 2006 when she returned to Hampshire to set up her weaving business.

Ellie now teaches workshops and courses across four styles of weaving, working alongside her mother, who teaches natural dyeing. Together they run Elka Textiles as a small team producing handwoven textiles, naturally dyed yarn and teaching resources.

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Eva H Kittelsen

Designing your EmbroiderMend

Eva Kittelsen is a textile artist, designer, author, and entrepreneur with more than 13 years of experience in the textile industry, ranging from large corporations such as Varner Group (Norway’s largest fashion company) to small start-ups like Fair & Square, as well as her own company, My Visible Mend. In Norway she is known as a finalist on Symesterskapet (The Great Norwegian Sewing Bee) and she is the author of the book Synlig Reparasjon (Visible Mending), published in 2023.

For the past ten years, Eva has delivered workshops and lectures on the textile industry, redesign, pattern making, sustainability,sashiko and creative and visible mending, taking a holistic approach to these subjects. Her business is built as a tool to help us create a more beautiful and caring world, centered all around replacing consumption with creativity, care, compassion and community. 

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Helen Hiebert

A Duo of Paper Lanterns

Helen Hiebert is a Colorado artist who constructs installations, sculptures, films, artists’ books and works in paper using handmade paper as her primary medium. She teaches, lectures and exhibits her work internationally and online, and is the author of the several how-to books about papermaking and papercrafts (her most recent is Weaving With Paper (Storey Publishing, 2025). Helen has an extensive network of paper colleagues around the world and her interest in how things are made (from paper) keeps her up-to-date on current paper trends, which she writes about in her weekly blog called The Sunday Paper. She interviews papermakers and paper artists on her podcast Paper Talk, and she holds an annual paper retreat and papermaking master classes in her Red Cliff studio.

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Isabella Strambio

Macrame Mug Cover

Isabella is an artist, educator, author and creative mentor known for her intuitive approach to igniting creativity in women. Blending guided meditation, mindful practices, and artistic exploration, she creates experiences that invite participants to reconnect with themselves and express their unique voice. Isabella specialises in macramé, offering workshops and retreats that inspire curiosity, presence, and self-discovery.

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Kasia Jacquot

Embroidered Cuff Bracelet

Kasia is a Polish-born embroidery artist and teacher based in Sydney, Australia, where she’s been running her embroidery business since 2014. Her work blends traditional Polish folk art motifs with a focus on a relaxed skrytach and letting go of perfection. Her patterns designed with the maker in mind so that each finished pattern, although designed by her, has plenty of room for individual expression. Kasia is also the creator of The Wednesday Tribe, a monthly embroidery membership and creative home for stitchers who want to learn new skills and to stitch at their own pace, without pressure or perfection. Her patterns, magazines and encouraging teaching style have found their way into homes across the world, carrying a simple belief: that everything we make with our hands tells the story of who we are.

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Kimberly Ligocki

Zwirnknopfe: The German Dorset Button

Kimberly has been serial crafting since she was 8 years old. In the pandemic, she discovered thread buttons and KABOOM! For three years she has been making and selling German-style thread buttons -- known as "zwirnknopfe" -- online. This is her first time teaching how to make them. Kimberly lives in Northern California with her husband and ferocious Frenchie guard dog, Jojo.

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Kira McCoy

Faux Oil-Cloth Coin Purse

Kira McCoy has been creating and crafting since she could hold a crayon. From needlepoint to pottery, to jewelry design and polymer clay, she's tried it all and loves to teach others so much she earned her BS in Art Education and never looked back. 

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Kristin Althea O’Connor

Seven Essential Oils Every Artist Needs 

Kristin is a Five Element Acupuncturist practicing in Massachusetts. Essential oils have always been a crucial part of her practice. An avid crafter and lover of Making Zen, Kristin is thrilled to weave together her wisdom of essential oils with the special needs of creators to help them amplify their creative process.

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Kristin Peterson 

Abstract Textile Seedpods

Kristin Peterson is a third generation artist, originally from South Dakota. She is always exploring and expanding the creative depths of being an artist. She very much enjoys vintage collage work, mixed media and sewing. Kristin loves color and things that have a love-worn comfortable feeling-like an old favorite pair of jeans-coffee stained, patched, painted and well loved. She wants her art to project feeling and make people feel good while looking at it. Her style contains vibrance mixed with a little funk, which is sprinkled with discreet sensibility. 

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Lauren Weber

Embroidered Landscape Brooches

Lauren Weber is the artist behind Garden Girl Studio, where she creates colorful fabric patterns, embroidery projects, quilts, and creative workshops inspired by plants, cozy moments, and everyday adventures. After studying horticulture at Cornell University, she discovered that her love of gardens naturally blossomed into a career creating art designed to brighten someone's day.

Whether she's designing a new fabric collection or teaching a beginner their first embroidery stitch, Lauren believes creativity should feel joyful, approachable, and a little restorative. She teaches both online and in person, sharing techniques that help makers slow down, create with confidence, and enjoy the process. Her work has been featured in national quilt exhibitions and Art Quilting Studio magazine, and her Skillshare classes have earned multiple Staff Pick honors.

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Lisa Goddard

Mixed Media Abstract Textile Landscapes

Lisa Goddard is a mixed media artist and tutor living on the edge of the Peak District national park in the UK. She is passionate about mixed media, art journaling and bookmaking.

Working predominantly with mixed media Lisa loves the freedom of not being restricted in what she uses, always looking for new exciting combinations to discover. She often combines collage, texture, fabric and paper with splashes combined with vintage images and found text.
Finding constant inspiration in nature, the surrounding countryside and in human connections her work often contains an unspoken narrative.

In recent years Lisa has discovered the joy of adding different fabrics and slow stitching into her work. She likes to use reclaimed fabrics as she believes every piece has a different story to tell.

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Madge Evers

Intro to Cyanotypes: Printing with the Sun!

Madge Evers is a visual artist whose practice is rooted in sustained attention to plant life and its slower, less visible processes. She is the author of Printing with the Sun, a practical guide to the cyanotype process published by Storey in 2026 and teaches workshops for people of all ages. Using alternative photographic techniques, mushroom spores, painting, and collage, her work explores the intersection of observed landscape details and imagined botanical forms. Her work has been exhibited throughout the Northeast, and she has participated in artist residencies in Massachusetts, Virginia, Ireland, and New York. Madge lives and works in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts.

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Mary Ann Gebhardt

Knitting Meditation: The Meditation Shawl

Mary Ann Gebhardt has been a lifelong knitter, crocheter, all things fiber, and yoga and meditation teacher, weaving together over four decades of mindfulness practice with a deep love of handcraft. A former medical technologist, she now focuses on guiding makers toward greater ease, presence, and embodied calm through creative practice. Her work explores the intersection of movement, breath, and making, inviting stitchers to experience their hands as a place of grounding and restoration. She is the author of Knitting Meditation: A 40-Day Journal and creator of the upcoming Mudras for Makers card deck. Through gentle hand yoga, mudras, and meditation, she helps makers transform everyday crafting into a soothing, intentional ritual of connection and stillness.

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Melissa Galbraith

Stitching Dimensional Strawberries

Melissa Galbraith is the fiber artist behind MCreativeJ. She learned a love of hands-on crafting from her mother at an early age. After years in corporate communications and social media, Melissa returned to her childhood love of crafts and re-found the joy of hand embroidery. She now designs hand embroidery kits, teaches hands-on workshops, and is the author of multiple embroidery books. She loves that embroidery is like coloring with thread and the ah-ha moment of helping others learn something new. 

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Michelle Hamill

Family Cloth: Stitched Keepsakes

Michelle is a multidisciplinary textile artist whose practice explores memory, connection, and the stories held within everyday materials. Working across embroidery, knitting, crochet, weaving, lace-making, beadwork, and mixed media, she combines traditional textile techniques with found and personal materials to create meaningful, hand-crafted works. Growing up in a family of makers, textiles have always been a way for Michelle to connect with her history and the people she loves. Her ongoing work with inherited and cherished family cloth transforms these materials into keepsakes that honour relationships, preserve memories, and are often gifted back to family members. Michelle's workshops invite participants to explore their own stories through slow stitching, creating meaningful objects from textiles that carry personal significance.

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Mollie Johanson

Stitching Joy: Adding Whimsy to Your Life With Embroidery

Mollie Johanson is a professional designer, illustrator, and stitcher. She is a contributor to Simply Sewing Magazine, Love Embroidery, and World of Cross Stitching, and the author of four crafting books, including her latest, Stitching Super-Cute Food Kawaii Style. Mollie shares creative inspiration and patterns on her long-running blog, Wild Olive, and has helped thousands of makers discover the charm of hand stitching and other crafts through her Etsy shop, online tutorials, and in-person workshops. She lives in the Chicago area, where she strives to make super cute stitching part of her daily life.

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Nichole Vogelsinger

Unpatterned Pleats: The Art of Improv Smocking

Nichole Vogelsinger is a fiber artist, author, and embroidery enthusiast who believes that stitching should be equal parts creativity and chaos (the fun kind!). Her signature style of bold fabric collages bursting with color, texture and lots of beads and sequins has inspired makers around the world. She’s the author of Boho Embroidery, The Pattern Collection and Needles Out!, a trio of books that celebrate her vibrant, free-spirited approach to fiber art. Nichole teaches for John Bead, Michaels, YouTube and leads in-person workshops and retreats. Whether she’s teaching online, leading workshops, or sharing tips on YouTube, Nichole’s mission is simple: help you fall wildly in love with needle and thread.

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Pattie Klimek

Crayon Tint Embroidery

Pattie is an embroiderer who started with her baby sitting money, a Girl Scout book on embroidery and a crafty mom who helped her learn the stitches.  After 30 some years as a professional embroiderer, she added quilting to her skills and travels around the US teaching both and lecturing about quilt history.  Based in San Francisco, the home of modern and art quilters, she is one of the very few quilters that hand piece, hand quilt, and hand finish her quilts in the traditional way of our mothers and grandmothers.  She is dedicated to reviving forgotten handwork techniques, such as crayon tint embroidery,  in the embroidery and quilting community and yes, she makes all her quilts entirely by hand.

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Rebekah Johnston

Traces of Touch: Exploring Layering, Texture and Motif

Rebekah Johnston is a textile artist based in Nottingham, UK, creating quilts and contemporary textile art from repurposed textiles through the lens of emotional well-being. Her work explores the therapeutic qualities of slow stitch, transforming discarded cloth into richly layered pieces that offer both visual and emotional comfort. Through her workshops, Rebekah invites others to experience the meditative rhythm of stitching, encouraging participants to embrace slowness, discover beauty in everyday materials, and cultivate a mindful connection between their hands, imagination and inner world.

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Selina Latour

Pocket Workshop

Selina Latour is a textile artist and art educator with a practice rooted in slow, tactile craft processes tied to community life. Selina is a self-taught mender with extensive experience in Swiss and woven darning, skills she uses in her repair work for The Seam.

Selina holds a BFA Interdisciplinary from NSCAD University (2016) and an MFA in Fibres from Concordia University (2023). Her teaching practice focuses on creating welcoming, collaborative spaces where participants can develop textile skills through experimentation and co-creation. Through workshops and participatory projects such as the Mending Circle, Sellina has introduced darning and repair techniques to participants across Montreal and London, encouraging creativity and connection through craft.

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