Quilt Canada 2023 Teachers & Lecturers

 

 Workshop Teachers

Virginia Caul-Gallant

Virginia is a self-taught, passionate machine quilter and takes any opportunity to share her love of machine quilting with others. She enjoys a relaxed and fun atmosphere in her classes and believes that this type of atmosphere is most conducive to learning. She sees the basics as fundamental to any skill development and sets the stage for student success in free-motion machine quilting.

Céleste Compion

Born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa, Céleste Compion comes from a family of sewing and knitting enthusiasts. She started learning needlecrafts from the age of 5 and was introduced to quilting in 1985, when she joined a small weekly quilting group and by 1999 she started a quilting group of her own. She taught quilting and patchwork in her home and in a sewing store in Cape Town.

In 2001, she moved to Canada. Since her arrival, she and her family have lived in beautiful Elora, on the edge of Mennonite country, and her first Canadian friends were quilters from local guilds. For several years, all needlecraft took a back seat to the demands of settling and making a new life as an immigrant, but now she is immersing herself in the world of textiles and creativity as never before.

Driven by her passion for the beautiful creativity of South Africa, she aims to teach more people about it, by importing and distributing Three Cats Shweshwe to North America. Shweshwe, often called the tartan of South Africa, is a heritage fabric with a fascinating social justice story. Her presentation, “Cotton, Colonies and Culture” is all about that story and how it fits into world history.

meerkatshweshwe.com

Sharon Fisher

Sharon took her first quilt class in the basement of a house over thirty years ago.  Being a single Mom of three small children and embarking on a new career this first quilt took about ten years to complete.

Constantly challenging herself with new ideas and techniques Sharon has taken classes at quilt shops both in Canada and the United States.   Having had the opportunity to learn from Lisa Bongean, Kim Diehl, Mary Elizabeth Kinch, Sue Spargo, Judy Eckhardt to name a few;  Sharon’s love for texture, wool applique and hand stitching evolved.

Combining her love of texture and colour with traditional, primitive and whimsical themes, Sharon uses embellishments to enrich basic designs. During this process, creating a niche for herself as a teacher in the true traditional style of quilting by sharing her skills and passions with other beloved quilters.

Carolyn Friedlander

Carolyn Friedlander is a designer working from her hometown of Lake Wales, Florida, an environment she enjoys for its warm weather, few distractions, and potent community of creative folk. In her work, she draws inspiration from features of the Florida landscape–its longleaf pines, palmettos, scrub land, sand, vibrant colors–as well as her background in architecture.

carolynfriedlander.com / @carolynfriedlander

Gloria Loughman

Gloria is a textile artist, based on the Bellarine Peninsula in Victoria.  She has been working in this medium for over 30 years. After completing some studies in design and colour as part of a Diploma of Art, she began to make my large vivid landscapes, depicting the Australian bush.  Most of her work showcases fabric that she has hand painted or dyed and features extensive machine embroidery. Recent work has been based on architecture and semi abstract landscapes.

glorialoughman.com

John MacPhail

John was born in Windsor, Ontario and has been a crafter and maker for as long as he can remember. The  maker influence was strong in his family and he would be encouraged to create at every opportunity.  While so many mediums inspired his creativity, it was his love of theatre and costume that eventually led  to his peaked interest in sewing and textiles.  

John received his BA with Honours from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was here that  he discovered his love for historical costuming, modern pattern drafting and unconventional sewing  techniques. 

John discovered his passion for everything quilts almost by accident, while searching for a sewing project  to occupy his down time. This quickly became his career focus, and started Art East Quilting Co. under  which he publishes modern quilt patterns and offers custom quilts, fabric goods and art pieces. He loves  using quilting in various art forms, and has become known for his textile animal portraits. John enjoys  spreading his love of quilting worldwide through his various virtual workshops which range from  traditional quilting techniques, modern unconventional thread application and quirky raw-edge appliqué  

www.arteastquiltingco.com

Susan Madu

Susan Madu is a retired CPA and a passionate creator and quilter.  

Susan has been quilting for over 35 years and garment sewing since she could reach up to a sewing machine.  Susan is never without a sketchbook or some project in her hands.  

Her quilting has evolved from making quilts from commercial patterns to designing her own patterns under the Modern Blended Quilts banner.  

Susan’s patterns appeal to both traditional and modern quilters alike.  A central theme of Susan’s patterns is blending together elements of traditional and modern quilting.  

Susan teaches regularly and has been described as a knowledgable teacher that takes great joy in sharing techniques and tips to help class participants be successful in their quilting projects.  Susan shares her insights with humor from the perspective of having learned the hard way what not to do – “ask me how I know”!  For the last 7 years, Susan has been teaching workshops and presenting Trunk shows in person and via Zoom. 

Susan has designed over 25 patterns and one of her innovative techniques in her pattern “Bright Squares” has been included in Studio 180 Design Ltd.’s Designer Gallery.  Susan’s “Mid Century Modern” quilt won first place in the Modern category at Quilt Canada 2021 and will be part of the 2023 Best of Canadian Quilts exhibit at the New England Quilt Museum.

Building our quilting community and supporting local quilt shops are important to Susan.  Given this, her patterns can only be found in your local quilt shop.  Susan’s patterns are available to local quilt shops by her Canadian Distributor – Erie Quilt Art. 

modernblendedquilts@gmail.com

Regina Marzlin

Regina is a studio textile artist. Using fabric as her medium, she explores shape, line, transparency and colours. The feel of the fabric, the slow process of adding marks by hand stitching, the layering of colours and textures informs the outcome. Regina creates mostly abstract and colorful textile collages. The process of creating her own fabrics through dyeing, painting, printing and other surface techniques is an integral part of the final artwork.

Regina’s inspiration comes from a multitude of sources like nature, architecture, history, music, geometry, language. Having lived on three different continents (Europe, Australia, now North America) has shaped her perception and sense of place and belonging. She reacts to the world around her and express her thoughts in an abstract way, using her personal vocabulary of design elements.

For the past 18 years Regina has been working on developing, showing and marketing her art, as well as promoting textile arts, curating exhibitions and teaching workshops. She is a juried member of the international artist groups Studio Art Quilt Associates, Cloth in Common, and Art Cloth Network.

www.reginamarzlin.com

Anne Morrell Robinson

Anne Morrell Robinson has been involved in the quilting world for decades and with over 700 quilts to her credit the passion hasn’t diminished. Her work has been exhibited across North America  and sold around the world. She has been sharing her skills and passion by teaching from her classroom at her business, KingRoss Quilts and Fibre Art, as well as guilds , conferences, and retreats. Over the years  her work has been published in many magazines and books. She likes to encourage her students to have fun, be creative and unique, and to find their personal style.

Tamara Kate Serrao

Tamara is a licensed fabric designer and quilter who is best known for the playful use of colour she employs in her designs and her fresh, inventive eye where quilt design is concerned. Her work has been featured in a number of International quilting magazines, she designs her own line of quilt patterns and she regularly creates original quilts for companies within the textile industry.

www.kayajoydesigns.com

Kate Ward

Based in Truro, Nova Scotia, Kate Ward is an award winning multidisciplinary artist working in textiles, ceramics, jewelry, video and installation. Her work is often minimalist, focusing on form, colour and the interplay of contrasts. Her practice is inspired by the ephemeral, the metaphysical, the symbolic, and the relationship between art, ritual and culture.

Born in Australia, she moved to Nova Scotia after completing her Masters degree in Visual Art at NSCAD, Canada in 2016. Kate has studied textiles at the Australian National University (BVA 1998), ceramics in Japan and Australia (Certificate IV 2012) and she won an award to study jewellery in Italy (Summer 2015). Professionally Kate has worked in the Arts in both the private and public sectors and she also has her Masters in Arts Management and Policy from London University, UK in 2008.

Kate is the recipient of numerous international scholarships, residencies and exchange programs. Her work has been selected for national and international exhibitions, and she was recently selected to participate in the prestigious Chateaux d’Orquevaux, France, Artist in Residence program in 2023. Her work is in public and private collections world wide.

www.zenstitching.ca

Jackie White

Jackie White loves quilting, teaching quilting and designing patterns. Her quilt patterns are published in books and magazines throughout North America. Jackie hosts regular quilt alongs in her facebook group at Jackie White Quilt Alongs, where she is followed by thousands of quilters. 

Jackie’s passion is introducing sewing and quilting to youth and adults. Because her patterns are easy to understand and fun to make she has taught many people how to quilt. When she is not running QAL’s, she is in her studio designing patterns and making clothing as a strike sewist for small Canadian companies or working on her next modern quilt. 

Jackie has a thriving side business making unique artisan soap including soap shaped like spools of thread and rotary cutters.  These can be found at Dewar Farm Soaps on Facebook and Instagram.

jackiewhitequilts.com

Lecturers

Letitia Fraser

Letitia Fraser is an interdisciplinary artist, whose work centres around her experience as an African Nova Scotian woman, growing up in the province’s Black communities of North Preston and Beechville. Descending from a long line of artists, her creative instincts were nurtured early in life. Through a combination of painting and textiles, she unearths previously untold narratives and pays homage to her community’s history of quilting. Recent exhibitions include Family Patterns with Darcie Bernhardt at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (2022), Every Chain at the Chester Art Gallery, Halifax (2022), Letitia Fraser at Mount St. Vincent Art Gallery, Nova Scotia (2019) and Mommy’s Patches: Traditions & Superstitions at the Anna Leonowens Gallery, Nova Scotia (2019). She graduated with a BFA from NSCAD University in 2019. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2018 Nova Scotia Talent Trust RBC Emerging Artist Award and was recently longlisted for the 2022 Sobey Art Award. Her work is included in several private and public collections including the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Scotiabank, the Canada Council and the Wedge Collection.

Laura Hart Wagner and Sara Hart Chisholm

The Hart sisters took their first English Paper Piecing class in 2000, making a simple 1” hexagon flower, and were hooked!  Since then, they have honed their skills, completed numerous projects, and continue to dream of new ways to explore the world of EPP.  They make the perfect team to share this love, as they come at the same art from different perspectives.

 Laura is a graduate of Moore College of Art and Design, majoring in Textiles.  She has designed for a number of fabric companies, currently working for Andover Fabrics in New York City.

 Sara is a graduate of Virginia Tech with a degree in Mechanical Engineering.  She has taught quilting since 2003 and especially enjoys pattern testing and the ‘math’ part of quilting.

 They have teamed up to share the history, mindfulness, and fun of EPP and invite you to explore the magic fussy cutting can create.  Let them inspire you!

Regina Marzlin

Regina is a studio textile artist. Using fabric as her medium, she explores shape, line, transparency and colours. The feel of the fabric, the slow process of adding marks by hand stitching, the layering of colours and textures informs the outcome. Regina creates mostly abstract and colorful textile collages. The process of creating her own fabrics through dyeing, painting, printing and other surface techniques is an integral part of the final artwork.

Regina’s inspiration comes from a multitude of sources like nature, architecture, history, music, geometry, language. Having lived on three different continents (Europe, Australia, now North America) has shaped her perception and sense of place and belonging. She reacts to the world around her and express her thoughts in an abstract way, using her personal vocabulary of design elements.

For the past 18 years Regina has been working on developing, showing and marketing her art, as well as promoting textile arts, curating exhibitions and teaching workshops. She is a juried member of the international artist groups Studio Art Quilt Associates, Cloth in Common, and Art Cloth Network.

www.reginamarzlin.com

Deb Plestid

Deb Plestid is surrounded by an Acadian forest and farm fields in northern Nova Scotia, the wind in the trees is often the loudest sound she hears. This place allows her to create, the country provides her with necessary solitude and seclusion. She seeks relatedness and sees her life as one in which we live interdependently. One can never know how we will touch one another’s lives. She create with her hands, if her work can elicit a smile; an emotional response, she feels she has done her job.

She plays with fabric, thread and paint; is drawn to nature, mathematics, light and shadow; exploring colours, textures and life. Every fibre art work is an adventure. Each one teaches that there are no creative limits. The work is to keep growing and to keep at bay the critical voices and to continue to be open to the world.

Making the work? She has an image and works to bring it to life. It is cutting and piecing, not quite knowing what will crystallize. It is adding and taking away, dyeing, painting, layering, collage, embellishing, and stitching, trusting that this will work with that. The same kind of trust we have that a small black and white seed will emerge and grow into a glorious tall sunflower. Bit by bit, piece by piece, it emerges.

Her most recent works are the illustrations in the children’s book “Sing in the Spring!” by celebrated author Sheree Fitch. The book is a poetic celebration of the season, it invites readers into a rural family home and the natural world that surrounds them. Tiny details, emerging from hibernation, the wonders of a changing season, the secrets of seeds and mudilicious puddles await!

Deb Plestid’s works are in collections in Canada, Europe, the Middle East and New Zealand.

She invites you to peek at her website www.debplestid.com

Anne Morrell Robinson

Anne Morrell Robinson has been involved in the quilting world for decades and with over 700 quilts to her credit the passion hasn’t diminished. Her work has been exhibited across North America  and sold around the world. She has been sharing her skills and passion by teaching from her classroom at her business, KingRoss Quilts and Fibre Art, as well as guilds , conferences, and retreats. Over the years  her work has been published in many magazines and books. She likes to encourage her students to have fun, be creative and unique, and to find their personal style.

Laurie Swim

Laurie Swim is an award winning artist, winner of the Portia White Prize, Nova Scotia’s foremost fine art award as well as the Dorothy McMurdie Award in 2013. Her works grace public and private collections including the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, City of Toronto, Maritime Museum of the Atlantic and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.

Laurie has created eight monumental community quilt projects with volunteers including Breaking Ground, The Hogg’s Hollow Disaster, 1960, (2000) now installed in the York Mills Subway in Toronto; The Canadian Young Workers Memorial Quilt, (2003) and Hope and Survival, The Halifax Explosion 1917 (2017), now in the permanent collection of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.

She is the author of The Joy of Quilting with an Introduction by Alex Colville, 1984, Quilting, 1991, Rags to Riches: The Quilt as Art, introduction by artist Mary Pratt, 2007, Hope and Survival, a Story of the Halifax Explosion, introduction by actress Jane Alexander, 2017.

Currently, Laurie is collaborating with Norwegian artist Ingrid Larssen on their project The Blue Ribbon, Our Shared Resource, the Gulf Stream, a celebration of the river of water that flows past us enabling our existence in the North Atlantic in both countries. The resulting works will be exhibited at the Sortland Cultural Centre in Norway and in Nova Scotia at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in 2024.

No Ordinary Magic, the Art of Laurie Swim: An Illustrated Biography written by award winning author, Carole Bruneau will be published 2024 and available at the CQA conference in Halifax.

You can view Laurie’s recent work by visiting the Laurie Swim Gallery in Lunenburg during your visit in Nova Scotia or on the gallery website.www.laurieswim.com

Andrea Tsang Jackson

Andrea Tsang Jackson is a textile artist, quilt designer, author and educator based in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. After working in a range of design fields and settings ranging from architecture to museums, the quilting medium called to her as a way to explore place, belonging, and agency. Andrea maintains both an art practice and a creative business, striving for a symbiotic relationship between the two. Her first book, Patchwork Lab: Gemology, was published by Lucky Spool in 2019. She holds a Master of Architecture from McGill University and a Master of Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

3rdstoryworkshop

David Woods

DAVID WOODS (Dartmouth NS) is a multi-disciplinary artist, performer and organization leader

Woods began his involvement in quilts when he curated the exhibition In This Place – the first ever exhibition of Black Art in Nova Scotia (1998 Anna Leonowens Gallery etc.) and included several quilts in that exhibition. This marked the very first time that quilts created by African Nova Scotian quiltmakers were presented in a public exhibition and also the first public recognition of African Nova Scotian quiltmaking traditions that which had been previously ignored by craft writers and researchers.  Woods followed this by curating When Black Women Uset’ Fly– the first ever ‘full’ exhibition of African Nova Scotian quilts (2001 Dartmouth Heritage Museum). In 2006 Woods was appointed Associate Curator of The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia where he bought the exhibition Mary Bendolph: Gees Bend Quilts and Beyond to the gallery.  Mary Bendolph was a key member of the famed Gees Bend Quiltmakers whose exhibition The Quilts of Gee’s Bend (2002) became a sensation in US art galleries and was the subject of an Emmy award-winning documentary. Since his time at the AGNS, Woods organized the Vale Quilters of New Glasgow (the province’s only African Nova Scotia quilt guild 2008) and curated several exhibitions of African Nova Scotian quilts including Our Ancestors’ Garden (2007), Learning To Fly (2008), Paintings and Quilts (2018) and the currently touring The Secret Codes– an expanded version of an earlier exhibition that made its debut during the last Quilt Canada Conference held in Halifax in 2011.

Oxford Quilters Guild