Checker Newsletter

Quilt designer and author, Karla Alexander has written several books for Martingale including Stack the Deck; Stack a New Deck; and Color Shuffle.  She also designs patterns under the name Saginaw Street Quilt Company.  Karla is part of the design team for Creative Grids – and has designed four rulers for them.  She teaches all over the country and teaches how to quilt using a variety of methods including her own stack methods.

Amy Barickman, founder and owner of Indygo Junction and sister company, The Vintage Workshop, grew up in the retail crafting business. She started Indygo Junction in 1990 and has since represented the talents of more than 25 designers and leading artists in the quilt and clothing pattern craft industry. Amy designs fabric for Red Rooster.  She will be sharing her newest project – Vintage Notions, due to be released next month.

Pat Barry is a professional machine quilter who is the author of “ABCs of Longarm Quilting”, several Gammill user manuals and is a regular contributor to OnTrack!, IMQA’s quarterly trade magazine. She at national shows including MQX, MQS, HMQS and IQA’s Schoolhouse Series. She has designed a complete line of quilting machine templates for Creative Grids® called Sweet Set™. She has a patent on the unique border template design.

Kathy Brown has self-published over 150 patterns and booklets under the Teacher’s Pet name.  She also publishes books with Martingale and House of White Birches as well as designs fabric with Red Rooster Fabrics.  Kathy’s quilts are designed to be made in a day or a weekend – instant gratification for beginning as well as experienced quilters!  Kathy  teaches and lectures for quilt guilds and quilt shops across the United States.

Eleanor Burns introduced the first Quilt in a Day Log Cabin book over 30 years ago and started a quilt revolution.  Her technique combined rotary cutting and chain-piecing so a quilt could be made in a day – and the industry has never been the same.  Eleanor has written over 100 books and has expanded her expertise into every area of quilting.  She also designs patterns; rulers and fabric for Benartex.

Karen Eckmeier, aka The Quilted Lizard, is an award-winning fiber artist and international teacher, author, and pattern designer. Her books Happy Villages, Accidental Landscapes, and Layered Waves emphasize her no-stress approach to playing with fabric, whether it be raw-edge collage or her layered/topstitching technique. Karen believes that lots of intense playing tends to yield wonderful results, and she shares this philosophy in her workshops, books, and patterns

Rita Fishel is a nationally known author, speaker, teacher, and owner of Creations Sew Clever – a quilt shop located in an 1800’s Georgian home in Chillicothe, Ohio.   She writes books for American Quilter Society and designs, consults and demonstrates for Creative Grids USA. She’s a native of Northeastern Ohio with a B.A. in Clothing & Textiles/Business from the University of Akron.  Rita teaches and demonstrates at shows and guilds all over the country.

Nancy Halvorsen is the designer, author and publisher of over forty project books and sixty quilt/craft patterns since she started her company, Art to Heart, in 1992. Nancy’s designs are sold internationally and cater to quilters who want appealing projects they can whip up in a hurry. Her projects include piecing, fusible appliqué and simple embroidery. Positive messages are an important part of Nancy’s whimsical designs. She also designs fabric for Benartex.

Penny Haren developed her technique, Pieced Appliqué™, which eliminates y-seams; inset points and curves from even the most intricate blocks.  She has written four books for Landauer Publishing and has designed several rulers for Creative Grids®.  Penny designs fabric for Henry Glass and consults with and writes the newsletter for Checker Distributors. She also writes a notions column for Fab Shop News – a bi-monthly publication for shop owners.

Joan Hawley was introduced to the world of quilting and found her passion. She started Lazy Girl Designs in 1997. With a concentration on purse and bag designs, her company offers a line of approximately 80 products including books, patterns, specialty notions and tools for sewing and quilting. Joan has shared her lighthearted approach and easy techniques that make her designs so popular on nearly two dozen quilting programs.

Dennis Horcher will demonstrate the new Sizzix Quilting Program which allows quilters to personalize their quilts and fabric creations.  Sizzix shape-cutting machine and dies enable quilters to make perfect, straight cuts every time.  Cut multiple layers of fabric at once with limited fabric waste.  The Sizzix Big Shot machine is the ideal tool for quilting and appliqué shape cutting and is compatible with thousands of Sizzix dies!

Nancy Johnson-Srebro loves to design and make quilts.  She developed the patented Diamond-Free ® method for making 8-pointed stars and Lone Stars using only squares and rectangles!  She has written several best-selling books including her latest – Fusible Magic.  Nancy has been a spokesperson for Omnigrid®, a division of Prym Consumer USA Inc., for over 20 years.  She also designed the incredible Flip-N-Cut Magic Templates™ for Omnigrid.

The Quilt Branch began in 1995 when Mary Jane Mattingly took a quilt class from Susan Knapp. Their most popular patterns are from the Six Halves Make a Whole series. The latest installments include Six Halves Make a Whole Starburst and Six Halves Make a Whole Sampler, which is a primer for using the House Ruler, designed by Mary Jane and Susan for Creative Grids®. This ruler cuts “all 45° shapes under the roof.”

Betsy Meyers and Margaret Winder of MorninGlory Designs create figure flattering patterns for quilt-as-you-go garments that are stylish and fit exceptionally well. Betsy’s love of quilting was inherited from her mother. Sewing as a young girl in Local 4H clubs she found an outlet for her talents. Margaret has run her own sewing and alterations for over 35 years sewing and continues to create and sew for others.

Karen Montgomery is owner of The Quilt Company, a full service quilt store located in Allison Park, PA.  Karen also designs fabric for Timeless Treasures and publishes a line of books and patterns under The Quilt Company name.  You may also know Karen from her lectures and Schoolhouse presentations at International Quilt Market as well as her column “Savvy Buying” which appears in the FabShop News.

Carol Porter is the Education Director for Clover Needlecraft where she helps make the company’s many unique products accessible and engaging.   She is an accomplished author, designer, sewer, quilter, knitter, pattern maker, and crafter.  Carol is a disciplined and thoughtful teacher whose encouragement inspires student creativity and success.  Carol is recognized for the strength of her “colorwash” designs and has produced quilt patterns under the Heatherworks label.

Mimi Shimp has self-published four books, too many patterns to count, and invented Triangle Paper for Quilters.  She is the Product Manager of Quilting, Sewing, Knitting, and Crochet at the Wm. Wright Company, now known as Simplicity Creative Group. The best part of her job is helping to develop new and innovative products that will inspire a new generation to continue in these art forms. She is a contributing writer to American Quilt Retailer.

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 free motion quilting.  She has published 9 instructional DVDs and 2 books on various free motion quilting topics.  Best known for her feather designs and hyperquilting techniques, her two books, Hyperquilting! and Feather Adventures! were just released.

Kim Templin is the creator of the Double Diamond Ruler™.  Kim and her husband Marc joined forces and started a new company – Bright Quilting Notions to produce and market her invention.  Since then, Kim has been bitten by the creative bug and has designed several patterns that use her ruler.  She brings her mathematics degree and love of geometry to the quilting world – and our industry will never be the same!

A quilter for over 30 years, Annie Unrein has been designing patterns and teaching quilting classes since 2000.  Her quilts and designs have been published in Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting, Quilt, Quilter’s Newsletter, and Memory Makers magazines.  One of only seven Superior Educators, teaches at Superior’s School of Threadology seminars.  Two of Annie’s favorite Superior products are TextureMagic and Charlotte’s Fusible Web fusible thread.

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