Quilters Calendar & Guild Network

resources for quilt guild volunteers

modern quilts

Heather Johnston

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Home: North Little Rock, AR

Heather has had a lifelong but varied love affair with fabric. She learned sewing at her mother and grandmothers’ knees and her first sewing project was a skirt. She picked up quilting in her teens, creating a hand-stitched Cathedral Window quilt and took off from there. Most of her early quilts were her own patterns. After a decade on hold, she got back into quilting after moving to Alaska.

She has taught beginner sewing, beginner quilting, and beginner alterations classes in the local community, as well as bag making classes at her local Alaskan quilt store.

Following up on her early days, Heather loves to create quilts geared to beginner quilters and create quilt patterns for panels. She is also focused on the backside of quilts and has started making and selling personalized sublimated quilt labels. You can see more on her website at HMJ Originals.

Heather’s Lecture is on Labels for Your Quilt. She discusses the many methods of making quilt labels, including using Sublimation, and she offers advice on what to include on your quilt labels.

Heather teaches via Zoom. Please contact her at: admin @ hmjoriginals.com (remove spaces). Please let Heather know that you found her on The Quilters Calendar!

Amy Friend

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Home: West Newbury, Massachusetts

Amy Friend is a former museum curator turned designer.  She designs modern quilts and specializes in foundation paper pieced designs.  She authored the books Intentional Piecing, Improv Paper Piecing: A Modern Approach to Quilt Design, and Petal + Stem. 

Amy runs community block swaps several times a year as well as block of the month and quilt along programs.  She is an award winning quilter and her quilts have been exhibited at a number of quilt shows as well as museums.  Amy is a national quilt teacher and lecturer, both on Zoom and in person.

Amy enjoys speaking to guilds about the modern quilting aesthetic and design principles like alternate gridwork and negative space.

She also teaches her own foundation paper piecing technique that considers directional fabric, the grain of the fabric, and minimizes waste. 

Her most popular workshops include Improv Paper Piecing where she teaches her unique approach to modern quilt design where participants each design their own improvisational block and repeat it through paper piecing. 

Another is Large Scale Intentional Piecing where fabrics are kept directional in order to harness the power of stripes or other motifs while foundation paper piecing on larger foundations.

While most of Amy’s classes are more appropriate for the intermediate to advanced quilter, she also teaches beginner paper piecing and welcomes beginners into any of her classes, spending extra time with them so they can succeed. Amy is interested in teaching virtually and limited (driving distance) travel.

Visit Amy’s website: During Quiet Time

Amy’s YouTube Channel: During Quiet Time

Please contact Amy at [amybfriend] @ gmail.com (remove brackets and spaces)

Please let Amy know that you found her on The Quilters Calendar!

Rachel Rossi

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Home: Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Rachael Rossi is a creator of sewing and quilting patterns operating out of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Originally from rural Pennsylvania, Rachel attended Harrington College of Design in Chicago, Illinois. 

Rachel’s designs are clean, modern, and simple. Her patterns are easy to understand for beginners and streamlined for masters. Her collection of patterns range from quilts to aprons to home decor. You can see them all in her online shop.

Rachel is passionate about bringing quilting to the next generation. This mission is woven throughout her user-friendly patterns, exciting trunk shows, and educational lectures. She offers a range of classes including paper piecing, traditional piecing, and curved piecing.

To see the full selection, please visit her website: https://www.rachelrossi.design/speaking-engagements/

Please let Rachel know you found her on The Quilter’s Calendar!

Mel Beach

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Home: San Jose, California

Mel Beach is a San Jose, CA based quilt artist, teacher and lecturer, who breaks away from tradition by adding her own modern, beautifully textured and colorful twists. She loves stretching her creativity through her completion of 60+ quilt challenges at the local and international level. Her quilt challenge entries draw upon her inquisitive nature of asking “What If?”, working in a series, comedy improv studies along with her love of nature, photography and sketching.

Many of her challenge quilts have been exhibited locally, juried into national quilt shows and traveling exhibits, published in books/magazines, earned awards/ribbons and selected as Finalists.

She is an Aurifil Artisan and a Featured Artist on The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims (episode 2112).

Mel is an industry leader in online teaching for guilds. She works closely with many guilds, including the Studio Art Quilt Association and the Northern California Quilt Council, to bring the best possible learning experience to her students. ~Marguerita

Multi-Media Lectures/Trunk Shows: Quilt challenges, fabric dyeing and free-motion quilting.

Quilting Workshops: Pebble & Play!, Mod Molas & Bright Blooms, Magnificent Mandalas, Walking Foot WOW.

Modern Design Workshops: Slice of Improv, Free Styling & Spiraling, Mod Mandalas, Intriguing Interleaves, Improv, Improv Piecing, Improvisational.

See more about Mel on her website Mel Beach Quilts.  Please let Mel know you found her on The Quilter’s Calendar!

Please let Mel know you found her on The Quilter’s Calendar!