MEET... Jill Schumacher

National Award winning machine quilter, Jill began making her first quilt at the age of 12. In 1994 she began making quilts and learned to machine quilt her own work. Her first machine quilt won the Best of Show at the Siskiyou County Fair in 1998 and in 1999, won Second Place in the State Fair.

Jill has taken many classes across the country from master quilters and is working toward her own certification as a master machine quilter. Jill is now teaching in several of the western states and enjoys sharing her love of quilting with others.

Jill quilts approximately 45 quilts a year for customers and also teaches her techniques to others to enhance the beauty of their own quilts. Jill has won national awards at Paducah, Kentucky at AQS as well as Best Machine Quilting awards at the NQA and the Pacific International Quilt Festival in Santa Clara, California.

Her latest quilt was featured in Great American Quilts 2004.

Come join Jill on a quilt adventure and learn the art of creating tomorrow’s heirlooms with your home sewing machine.

Award Winning Quilts by Jill

MEET... Kay Cohn

Kay Cohn began sewing doll clothes as a young girl on her grandmother's Singer treadle sewing machine. She continued sewing, learning to embroider and other needlework over the years. In 1996 she began to teach herself how to quilt and joined MQSC in December, 1997. Always interested in beautiful needlework and old linens, she made her first hankie quilt in 2003 as a remembrance of a friend who recently passed away. Since then, she has made many hankie quilts incorporating modern fabrics and old linens into the various designs.

"I love combining old with new and giving renewed life to beautiful old linens that are no longer used in our modern lifestyles. Quilting has been the perfect venue for this. This has led me to Victorian crazy quilting and embellishment which marries all of my needlework passions."

MEET... Linda Reid

Hi everyone. I have been a seamstress since I was a teenager. I've made all of my children's clothing and enjoy all types of crafts, occasionally sneeking in quilts when time allowed. Now that I'm an empty nester I have become a devoted and passionate quilter! I look forward to sharing my quilting knowledge and pattern creations with you.

This unique quilt top pattern is very versatile. A combination of light, medium and dark fabrics are best suited for this quilt, use your imagination and have fun! It is the perfect gift for that special person or event; wedding, baby, holiday, theme prints (animals, sports or personal photo) or companion prints all work well. We all have that beautiful large print fabric in our stash, now's the time to use it.

MEET... Freddy Moran

	Freddy Moran likes to divide her life into three periods: school years, parenting years, and artist years. She graduated form Dominican College, a small liberal arts women's college in San Rafael, California. Pottery was Freddy's first love, and she majored in art. After graduation, she married her childhood sweetheart, Neil----they met when they were 12 and 13. Fifty-three yeares late, they are still boyfriend and girlfriend. Freddy and Neil raised a family of five sons. Theri children's families, including 13 grandchildren, live near by and continue to keep her busy and fill her with joy. Freddy has been producing her ground-breaking colorful quilts for the past 15 years. Her first quilting book, Freddy's House, brought her fearless use of color to a wide audience and is stillin demand. Freddy travels and teaches extensively, challenging quilters to break the rules and do what works best for them. She has appeared on national television programs including the DIY network. "Red is neutral" is her quilting mantra.

MEET... Karen A. Maertins

It seems that I have been teaching in Sonoma County forever, just over 25 years…..
Many of you, I hope will remember me from my years at New York Fabrics, JoAnn’s Fabrics, Village Sewing Center, The Place That Sells Sewing Machines and The Place to Sew. Recently, I have felt inspired  to teach again. Nicole the owner of The Material Girl, has graciously given me the opportunity to share my knowledge and abilities.

Like so many of you I started by sewing at the age of 11 with doll clothes and many, many Muumuu’s during a summer vacation. I was soon making all of my own school clothes and started sewing for others; it was better money that babysitting…
My sewing career in the Sewing Industry has included just about all types of sewing, from beginning sewing to tailoring, home decorating to silk ribbon work, embroidery to decorative stitching, not to mention quilting. Some experiences in my life with sewing have included being a Machine Educator and Machine Club Leader; this has given me the knowledge of most all the major brands of sewing machines. One of my true Love’s is teaching and for that reason I became a Certified Palmer/Pletsch Educator as well as a Licensed Sulky Teacher.

Many of the classes that I offer are not the traditional quilting classes, rather wall hangings, placemats, special holiday projects, surface embellishments, garment construction and of course Machine Education. As you ca imagine, over the years I have designed soooo many projects and hope you will join me when they come on the class schedule. During 2004/2005 I had the pleasure to co-author 3 workbooks for the Babylock Sewing Machine Company, one of which is a workbook on quilting projects.   My most recent accomplishment has been creating a pincushion kit, which I am proud to say made its way into Nancy’s Notion Catalog in 2005. You will find these kits and the specialized pincushions I crate available exclusively at The Material Girl.

I am personally looking forward to teaching again and hope to see many of my former (Note I didn’t say old) students as well as making some new “Sewing” and “Quilting” buddies.

MEET . . . Linda Ballard

MEET... Angie Thornton

My name is Angela Thornton I live in Ukiah on our family ranch with my husband and 3 children. I started sewing as a child in 4-H and have been sewing for about 30 years now. I began Quiltinf about 18 years ago when I had my first child. I enjoyed quilting so much, I started working in a quilt shop part-time then began to tach clases. My love of quilting grew even more and I opened a quilt shop of my own with two of my friends. They had a Gamill Longarm Machine, So I bought a share of it with them and began longarm quilting about 2 years ago. I became so busy doing custom quilting for people and teaching quilting classes, I sold my portion of the Quilt Shop to my partners took the Gammill home built a Studio and now I teach quilting classes, and do custom longarm quilting form my home. What a great life!

MEET... Don Linn

Don began his quilting adventure about 14 years ago as a long arm quilter. From the beginning of his career as a quilter Don has set out to be the best he could be. When everyone else was doing overall pantograph designs, he devised a way to do hand quilting designs on a long arm machine. His unique style of quilting has led to many commissions by famous quilters such as Pat Campbell, Sally Collins, Paula Nadelstern and Sharyn Craig to name a few.

Don has also been a quest on Alex Anderson’s "Simply Quilts" television show.

For the past three years Don has been a teacher at Asilomar in Pacific Grove. Later this year he is tentatively scheduled to teach machine quilting in Japan.

Don has retired from long arm machine quilting for others, but still enjoys piecing his own design and teaching at select shops on a limited basis. Don’s newest artistic venture involves working in slumped glass and forged metal.