Virtual Lecture Series

Krista West was born in Portland, Oregon and began sewing at the age of 4. Her love of handcrafts as a child and her conversion to Orthodox Christianity in 1993 led into an interest in Orthodox ecclesiastical vesture. She apprenticed with Leslie Schaill of Traditional Cassocks and Vestments from 1994 to 1997 and began Krista West Vestments in 1997 with www.kwvestments.com launching in 1998 as the first ecclesiastical tailoring website on the Internet. Her focus quickly centered upon the Greek style and she has sewn for clergy and churches in 48 of the 50 United States as well as multiple other countries.

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Susan Curtis is the curator of collections at the Emily Reynolds Historic Costume Collection at North Dakota State University in Fargo. This collection of over 5,000 objects documents the history of the region through the clothing and textiles made and used by the people who live there. Ms. Curtis earned a masters degree in Museum Studies with a minor in historic textiles from the University of Nebraska and has been working in museums for over twenty years. Her love of embroidery came from her grandmothers, who spent many patient hours teaching her to wield a needle and thread. Ms. Curtis earned a graduate certificate in Women and Gender Studies from NDSU and is currently working towards a PhD in History focusing on women’s embroidery in the Northern Great Plains.

Liz Tapper trained as an apprentice at The Royal School of Needlework, and now works as a professional embroiderer, designer and tutor. She has worked on commissions for Harrods and Lulu Guinness, London Fashion Week, for television and on numerous private commissions, with her work being featured on the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). She lives in Somerset in the UK and is a Member of the Somerset Guild of Craftsmen and the Society for Embroidered Work.

Dr Alexandra Makin is a professional embroidery, trained on the Royal School of Needlework’s three-year apprenticeship, and a textile archaeologist (PhD), specialising in embroidery and textiles from early medieval Britain. At present she is working on the AHC funded Unwrapping the Galloway Hoard where she was the Post-Doctoral Research Associate for textiles. Alexandra also pursues her independent academic research, experimental archaeology work, and is consultant and textile analyst for archaeological units. Her book, The Lost Art of the Anglo-Saxon World: the sacred and secular power of embroidery, was published in 2019 and her co-edited volume, Textiles of the Viking North Atlantic: Analysis, Interpretation, Re-creation, will be out soon. She has published book chapters and journal articles and spoken on radio and TV about many aspects of early medieval embroidery, including the Bayeux Tapestry. Alexandra also owns and runs Early Medieval Embroidery where she designs and sells embroidery kits using ‘authentic’ early medieval materials and teaches embroidery workshops. Through the Early Medieval (mostly) Textiles blog and her YouTube channel, Early Medieval Embroidery, she keeps people up to date with her research.

Website: https://alexandramakin.com

Celeste Chalasani is an award-winning designer and teacher specializing in Stumpwork. She has taught extensively both in person and virtually for the Embroiderers’ Guild of America (EGA) at chapter workshops, regional and national seminars; the National Academy of Needlearts; other regional guilds; Quiltfest and Craftsy. She is a graduate of the National Academy of Needlearts Teachers’ Certification program specializing in Stumpwork.

“Teaching Stumpwork is a labor of love for me. I am passionate about sharing what I know. I approach teaching from the understanding that different people learn in different ways. I strive to provide clear written instructions with step-by-step color photos, orally explain the technique with color coded visual aids, demonstrate stitches and techniques, and work one on one with each student as they practice their techniques.”

 www.celestechalasani.com

Needle Arts Profile: Celeste Chalasani

A.Newbold “Newbie” Richardson has been in private practice as a textile conservator and exhibition specialist for over 40 years, focusing on outreach to the small museum community. She continues to teach workshops for museum volunteers, state museum associations, and through the Costume Society of America on preventative conservation and textile display. She developed her passion for fabrics, embellishments, and sewing naturally, coming from a long line of passionate needlewomen. Smocking is her needlework of choice.

She is a specialist appraiser in clothing and textiles with the American Society of Appraisers and joined forces with Colleen Callahan, forming the Costume and Costume Specialists in 2003. (www.costumeandtextile.net) Some clients include George Washington’s Mount Vernon, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Maryland Center for History and Culture, Jamestown Yorktown Foundation, and The D.A.R. Museum. She is a Fellow of the Costume Society of America and textile advisor to Dumbarton House, headquarters of the National Society of the Colonial Dames in America. She received her BS in Costume Design from Northwestern University and graduate work in Theatrical Costume Design from The George Washington University. While in grad school she worked for several antique clothing stores in DC and Virginia mending the clothing and embroideries. This experience led her to two years of intense self-study in textile conservation at the Textile Museum in Washington, DC (1983-’85).

Ann Strite-Kurz has been an active designer and teacher for thirty nine years. She is NAN certified and is an EGA Master Craftsman in canvas embroidery. Ann specializes in innovative stitch treatments and has published six books on different styles of patterns. She also received the 2010 ANG Literary Award and she has been a feature writer for Needlepoint Now for ten years.

Designer Susan Greening Davis is a Home and Garden Television Celebrity Guest, Awarded as a DMC International Teacher, The “Original Gadget Gal” and Independent Historical Needlework Researcher.

Susan Greening Davis is known as a needle artist/technician. She has had the pleasure of designing, and teaching, for shop owners, guilds, and events for the last 47, plus years. Susan studied her trade in Denmark, England, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Netherlands and Germany as well as with the Danish masters who have visited the United States to instruct.

Susan designs all of her creations – from start to the famous. “Self-finishing” is her forte. She stitches all of her creations as they come from her head, through her heart, and then the needle. After the correct fabric, fibers, stitches and finishing are completed the design is charted.

Gina Barrett is a textile artist, designer & writer with a passion for historical passementerie – especially buttons! She now provides bespoke items to costumers for film, theatre, museums and fashion, and continues to research and to write about both old techniques and developing new ones. She is particularly keen to discover the lost techniques used to create buttons, which of course means steadily building a collection to learn from. She & her husband Mark run Gina-B Silkworks, which brings original tools, kits and materials for traditional crafts and trimmings to a modern audience through their website, shops and the UK TV craft channel, Create & Craft.

Erin Harvey Moody recently earned her certificate in Museum Education at University of Glasgow. Christy Gordon Baty is a graduate student of History at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. They co-authored “A Book By It’s Cover” for Harvard Magazine and they have presented “The Presence of the Needle” at the “Slices of Everyday Life,” at University of Cambridge, “A Woman’s Communion, Embroidered Devotionals in Early Modern England,” at the Ecclesiastical History Society Winter Conference, “Convenience vs. Couture: The Dilemma of Character Driven Costume Interpretation at Heritage Site” at the Pacific Coast Branch conference of the American Historical Association, and “Women’s Work Seen and Unseen: the Economic Influence of Needlework” at the Centuries of Cloth Conference at the University of Cambridge. And most recently, Erin and Christy won the Agnes Strickland prize for best paper presented at the South Central Renaissance Conference for “Gloriana’s Gifts.”

Dr. Jessica Grimm gained a doctorate in archaeozoology before she re-trained as a professional embroideress with the Royal School of Needlework. After visiting a medieval embroidery exhibition in the Netherlands in 2015, she embarked on a self-funded research project focused on the embroidery techniques used in these pieces. The results of which are disseminated through her weekly blog and in the embroidery courses she teaches.

Claudia Dutcher Kistler is a California girl. Her grandmother was a teacher and her family owned the local hardware store in town. She completed her schooling there after receiving a degree is Physiological Psychology. Her family lived in the Bay Area for over 150 years. Claudia and her husband Bruce moved to Southern Arizona in 2016.

Claudia has always liked to work with her hands. She started crocheting early. In her teens she did embroidery. In her 20’s she learned to do counted cross stitch. In her 30’s she opened her own full line needlework store called Dutch Treat Needlecrafts in Livermore, CA. To fill a need, and to do something creative and different than other needlework designers, she created her own designs using Anne Cloth fabric. She was most well known as Dutch Treat Designs which specialized in Anne Cloth tabletopper designs in the 1990’s.

Claudia has always liked hearing or finding the story of a thing, a person, or a place. She also enjoys putting “like things” together. She believes that the more we see, the more we learn.

In the 1980’s Claudia began collecting perforated paper needlework. Her passion for collecting paper needlework started because she owns a paper piece stitched by her Great Grandmother. That passion resulted in her offering lectures about perforated paper needlework, charting Victorian motto designs for today’s stitchers, and spreading information about antique perforated paper needlework through the public website Perforatedpaper.net.

In the early 1990’s when she began to seriously collect antique samplers, she was always interested to see if there was more that could be learned about a piece. When she bought her first Bristol sampler in 1998 she had no idea what it was. The journey to learn what she owned and to find out the history behind the Bristol orphan samplers has resulted in the lectures she gives today on that topic and the information she shares publically on Bristolsamplers.com. She works with Mullers.org to help people find information about the orphan samplers and the girls who stitched them.

Her tech savvy husband Bruce Kistler maintains the websites for everyone to enjoy. Bruce, Claudia, and their kitties are currently enjoying the Catalina foothills of Southern Arizona. Claudia is still collecting, still teaching and designing for needlework events, and still learning new stories about needlework which she is happy to share.

www.dutchtreat.com
www.bristolsamplers.com
www.perforatedpaper.net

Isabella Rosner is a third-year Ph.D. student at King’s College London, where she researches and writes about Quaker women’s decorative arts before 1800. Her project focuses specifically on seventeenth-century English needlework and eighteenth-century Philadelphia wax and shellwork. She received her BA from Columbia University and her MPhil from Cambridge University and has been lucky enough to work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, LACMA, Colonial Williamsburg, and Fitzwilliam Museum. Isabella specializes in the study of schoolgirl samplers and early modern women’s needlework in addition to hosting the “Sew What?” podcast about historic needlework and those who stitched it.

Harriet Alonso is a Brooklyn-born historian and embroiderer. In her childhood, her mother introduced her to cross stitch which always held an attraction for her, but as an adult she fell in love with needlepoint. From 1973 to 1980, she completed a series of “political posters” which expressed her growing commitment to feminism, human rights, and peace. This led her to the study of women’s history. From 1980-2015, she devoted her professional life to studying, researching, teaching, lecturing, and writing about peace movement and women’s history, resulting in her receiving the 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Peace History Society, an affiliate of the American Historical Association. Today, as a retired Professor Emerita from the City College of New York, CUNY, she combines her love for women’s history with her love for embroidery. You can learn more about her embroidery and history work on her website at http://harrietalonso.com/.

Krista West was born in Portland, Oregon and began sewing at the age of 4. Her love of handcrafts as a child and her conversion to Orthodox Christianity in 1993 led into an interest in Orthodox ecclesiastical vesture. She apprenticed with Leslie Schaill of Traditional Cassocks and Vestments from 1994 to 1997 and began Krista West Vestments in 1997 with www.kwvestments.com launching in 1998 as the first ecclesiastical tailoring website on the Internet. Her focus quickly centered upon the Greek style and she has sewn for clergy and churches in 48 of the 50 United States as well as multiple other countries.

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Dr. Joseph McBrinn is an Irish art and design historian. He is Reader in Art and Design History at Belfast School of Art, Ulster University in Northern Ireland. He has published and lectured widely on Irish art and design history as well as on the intersecting histories of gender identity, sexuality and disability. He is currently writing a biography of the Irish painter and stained glass designer Evie Hone (1894-1955).

Kathy Andrews is a textile artist and embroidery teacher who works with students of all abilities, teaching them the techniques and the joy of hand embroidery. She received her Certificate of Technical Hand Embroidery with Merit from the Royal School of Needlework and her City and Guilds Certificate in Design and Stitched Textiles. Her work has been exhibited at several shows and galleries across Ireland and the United Kingdom. Kathy is a member of the Cedar Valley Chapter of the EGA and the EGA Fiber Forum. With her enthusiasm for stitch and encouraging classroom atmosphere, she is a sought-after teacher of embroidery. Kathy has taught for EGA chapters in the United States, a mini-class at EGA National and globally in her many online courses.

Toni Gerdes holds Level II teachers’ certification from the National Academy of Needlearts(NAN) specializing in canvas embroidery. She is the Director of Education for NAN as well as past President of NETA. She has received numerous awards for her designs. Toni has taught for NAN, EGA, and ANG. She has been published in Needle Pointers, Needlepoint Now, and in Needle Arts as the Designer Across America.

Christine Crawford-Oppenheimer started embroidering when she was six years old, and learned many techniques from her mother, who was an avid embroiderer. When she took early retirement in 2011, she joined the Embroiderers Guild of America, and has taken advantage of opportunities to learn even more techniques. Sometime in the distant past, she learned about the Bayeux Tapestry, and put it on her bucket list. She finally visited it in 2018. Before her visit, she read a book about it, which raised questions, which led to reading more and more books about it, which led to answers or potential answers to some questions, but also to more questions. The material on the Tapestry was so fascinating that she decided to put together a talk about it, to share all these tidbits of knowledge (and questions!).

Margaret Kinsey is an EGA certified teacher in silk and metal thread embroidery. She is certified to teach Japanese traditional embroidery. She is the designated US teacher for the Kunimitsu Rozashi Studio and studies with Fumiko Ozaki. Margaret is the 2010 recipient of the national EGA Gold Thread Award and teaches at all levels of EGA. She teaches at national seminars and chapters of ANG and EAC. She was the 2012 keynote speaker and taught at the New Zealand Embroidery Guild Conference in Christchurch, NZ, and toured, taught, and lectured additional venues in New Zealand. Margaret chaired the 5th, 6th and 7th EGA International Embroidery Conferences. She received the Lifetime Achievement Award from NAN, 2021.

Catherine Jordan holds Master Craftsman certifications in the counted thread, crewel, color, and design programs of EGA. She is currently chair of the Master Craftsman design program and Master Craftsman Coordinator. Catherine is a certified Zentangle® teacher and former juried member of EGA’s artists’ group, Fiber Forum. Catherine teaches at local needlework chapters and regional, national, and international seminars. www.CatherinesDesigns.net 

Howard Vincent Kurtz has an extensive and diversified career in costumes, which has involved professional design, academic teaching, and work as a fashion historian. He is Professor Emeritus of Theater at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, While at Mason, he served as the Associate Curator of Costumes and Textiles at Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens in Washington, DC, the former residence of the Post cereal heiress, Marjorie Merriweather Post. Howard is a Fellow of the Costume Society of America and lectures on topics related to historical dress throughout the East Coast.

Isabella Rosner is a third-year Ph.D. student at King’s College London, where she researches and writes about Quaker women’s decorative arts before 1800. Her project focuses specifically on seventeenth-century English needlework and eighteenth-century Philadelphia wax and shellwork. She received her BA from Columbia University and her MPhil from Cambridge University and has been lucky enough to work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, LACMA, Colonial Williamsburg, and Fitzwilliam Museum. Isabella specializes in the study of schoolgirl samplers and early modern women’s needlework in addition to hosting the “Sew What?” podcast about historic needlework and those who stitched it.

Leslie Rinchen-Wongmo is a textile artist, teacher, and author of Threads of Awakening: An American Woman’s Journey into Tibet’s Sacred Textile Art. One of few non-Tibetans to master the Buddhist art of silk appliqué thangka, she stitches bits of silk into elaborate figurative mosaics that bring the transformative images of Buddhist meditation to life. Her artwork has been exhibited internationally and featured in magazines such as Spirituality & Health, FiberArts, and Fiber Art Now and in the documentary, Creating Buddhas: The Making and Meaning of Fabric Thangkas. She teaches women around the globe through her Stitching Buddhas virtual apprentice program, an online, hands-on course bridging East and West, traditional and contemporary. After two decades abroad, Leslie returned to southern California where she now lives with three cats and enough fabric to last several lifetimes. Visit her at threadsofawakening.com.

Kathy Andrews is a textile artist and embroidery teacher who works with students of all abilities, teaching them the techniques and the joy of hand embroidery. She received her Certificate of Technical Hand Embroidery with Merit from the Royal School of Needlework and her City and Guilds Certificate in Design and Stitched Textiles. Her work has been exhibited at several shows and galleries across Ireland and the United Kingdom. Kathy is a member of the Cedar Valley Chapter of the EGA and the EGA Fiber Forum. With her enthusiasm for stitch and encouraging classroom atmosphere, she is a sought-after teacher of embroidery. Kathy has taught for EGA chapters in the United States, a mini-class at EGA National and globally in her many online courses.

Award-winning artist Salley Mavor has spent 4 decades developing her signature style and working methods, carving out her own niche within the children’s book world and the fiber art community. Her three-dimensional embroidered scenes have been used as children’s book illustrations, social commentary and stop-motion animation. As an illustration student at the Rhode Island School of Design in the 1970’s, Salley left traditional mediums behind, preferring to communicate her ideas with sculptural needlework. Salley has illustrated 11 picture books using her distinctive blend of materials and hand-stitching techniques, including Pocketful of Posies, which won the 2011 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award and the 2011 Golden Kite Award. Her popular how-to book, Felt Wee Folk is in its 2nd edition, inspiring creativity in all ages. The picture book, My Bed: Enchanting Ways to Fall Asleep around the World is her most recent publication. She works in her home studio in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

Youngmin Lee is a textile artist living in the San Francisco Bay Area. She studied Clothing and Textile in college and continued her studies and received an MFA in Fashion Design. She worked as a fashion designer in Seoul, South Korea. She chose Bojagi (Korean wrapping cloths) as her creative medium and presented workshops on Korean Textile Arts including Bojagi workshops. In addition to teaching in person, Youngmin created the DVD Bojagi: The Art of Wrapping Cloths in 2013 to reach people from afar. She teaches numerous workshops about Bojagi and Korean traditional textile art from. She founded the Korean Textile Tour in 2017 to introduce Korean traditional textile art and culture. Youngmin’s bojagi works have been exhibited and collected throughout the United States and abroad including the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.

Cynthia Shank Steinhoff is the director of the library at Anne Arundel Community College, where she has been a member of the faculty since 1983. A graduate of Edinboro State College (now Edinboro University of Pennsylvania), she also holds a Master of Library Science degree from Clarion University of Pennsylvania and a Master of Business Administration degree from University of Baltimore.

Cynthia is a stitcher, sampler collector, and needlework researcher. She began stitching as a young girl and still owns the first set of stamped pillowcases that she made. Her collection of samplers includes works by girls in Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, among other states, and from Scotland, England, and Ireland. The oldest sampler in her collection was made in England in the 1730s. Her current areas of focus are samplers made in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware, and those stitched by Quaker girls. She researches many aspects of her needlework pieces, including stitches and materials used in the samplers, the stitchers’ lives, and connections between her pieces and others in museums and private collections.

Cynthia contributed to and copy-edited Wrought with Careful Hand: Ties of Kinship on Delaware Samplers, by Dr. Lynne Anderson and Dr. Gloria Seaman Allen, the catalog that accompanied an exhibition of 60 Delaware samplers at the Biggs Museum of American Art in Dover, Delaware, in 2014. She is the co-author with Gloria Seaman Allen of Delaware Discoveries: Girlhood Embroidery, 1750-1850, published in 2019, and is also its editor. Cynthia wrote Delaware Schoolgirl Samplers, an essay on the M. Finkel and Daughter web site. She has given presentations about samplers at numerous needlework guilds, Winterthur’s biennial needlework conference, Penn Dry Goods Market, and Sewell C. Biggs Museum of American Art in Dover, Delaware.

A member of the Annapolis Historic Sampler Guild and Loudoun Sampler Guild, Cynthia also belongs to three chapters of the Embroiderers Guild of America – Constellation, Washington DC, and CyberStitchers, the EGA’s online chapter. She is first vice president of Anne Arundel Genealogical Society in Maryland.

When not researching samplers, Cynthia can be found stitching (usually a sampler), reading a mystery novel, and hanging out on the family dog.

Jacqui Clarkson has taught for EGA, ANG, quilt guilds, a Fine Arts college and museums in Canada and the United States. Her workshop and lecture topics range from Sashiko, threads, to historical aspects of needlework. She has designed pieces for national thread and fabric companies, and for national magazines and needlework books. She has been published in the ANG magazine. Jacqui is a Journeyman Level II in the Master Teacher Program of ANG. She has served in leadership roles within local and region level of EGA and ANG.

Christine Crawford-Oppenheimer started embroidering when she was six years old, and learned many techniques from her mother, who was an avid embroiderer. When she took early retirement in 2011, she joined the Embroiderers Guild of America, and has taken advantage of opportunities to learn even more techniques. Sometime in the distant past, she learned about the Bayeux Tapestry, and put it on her bucket list. She finally visited it in 2018. Before her visit, she read a book about it, which raised questions, which led to reading more and more books about it, which led to answers or potential answers to some questions, but also to more questions. The material on the Tapestry was so fascinating that she decided to put together a talk about it, to share all these tidbits of knowledge (and questions!).

Donna DeFabio Curtin is Executive Director of the Pilgrim Society and Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, MA, the oldest continuous Museum in the United States, where she stewards the world’s most significant collection of the possessions of the Mayflower Pilgrims and fosters inclusive understandings of America’s colonial beginnings. Holding a PhD in Early American History from Brown University, Dr. Curtin has been active in the fields of public history and museum education through a varied career, including years of spirited advocacy for inclusive histories. As Director of the women-founded Plymouth Antiquarian Society, she stewarded and exhibited an extensive needlework and textile collection, including Plymouth area samplers. In her current position, she has been involved with the Plymouth Tapestry project from its conceptual stage and oversees exhibition and conservation of the work-in-progress. Dr. Curtin resides with her family on the banks of historic Town Brook, which once provided sweet drinking water for the Wampanoag and Pilgrim families of early Plymouth.

About Dr. Lynne Anderson:
Dr. Lynne Anderson is a retired professor of education from the University of Oregon where she specialized in technology-based solutions to reading, writing, and studying for marginalized students. She is currently Director of the Sampler Archive Project, a nationwide effort to locate, photograph, and document all American schoolgirl samplers in public and private collections – sharing them with scholars and the general public in a freely available online searchable database. Dr. Anderson is also the president of the Sampler Consortium, an international membership organization dedicated to the study of schoolgirl samplers and related girlhood embroideries. The Sampler Consortium has three major goals: advance scholarship on historic samplers and related needlework; increase access to information about schoolgirl samplers and early female education; and provide logistical and financial support to projects aligned with these goals. Toward that end, she is currently collaborating with local coordinators on the Vermont Sampler Initiative and the Dutchess County Sampler Initiative. Dr. Anderson regularly publishes on the topic of schoolgirl needlework and is a frequent speaker at state, national, and international venues.

About Dr. Mayela Flores Enriques:
Dr. Mayela Flores is an art historian and professor at the Universidad Iberoamericana. She specializes in the intersections between art history, material culture, and gender studies, with a particular focus on the history and practice of embroidery in Mexico. With extensive experience as a curator, researcher, and speaker, Dr. Flores has collaborated with various museums in Mexico since 2008. In addition, she has authored critical papers and book chapters on the history of Mexican women’s arts and crafts. She has served as a researcher for the National Museum of Art (MUNAL) and as the Head Curator at the Franz Mayer Museum located in Mexico City.

Dr Lynn Hulse is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and the Royal Historical Society. She is also co-founder of Ornamental Embroidery, which specialises in the teaching and designing of historic needlework, and runs workshops and lecture programmes in museums, art galleries and historic houses across the UK, including the Ashmolean Museum since 2011. She has published widely on the history of needlework from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries and is the editor of May Morris: Art and Life (2017) and The Needle’s Excellency: English raised embroidery (2108). Her most recent book, Reviving the Art of Embroidery: Lady Victoria Welby and the Founding of the Royal School of Needlework, 1872-1881, will be published later this year.

Sarah Pedlow is an artist working with embroidery and cultural preservation. In 2009 while in Budapest for an artist’s residency, she visited the Ethnographic Museum and fell in love with the traditional clothing and embroidery. The visit inspired her to seek out women who stitch a particular style called Hungarian written embroidery in Transylvania, Romania, and start the education and preservation project ThreadWritten in 2012. She has been lecturing and teaching cultural embroidery workshops since 2014 and now leads stitching retreats in Europe. Residencies in Iceland; Oaxaca, Mexico; and Holland, as well as embroidery study in Ukraine and Portugal, inform her current practice. She holds an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, and a BA in Studio Art and French Studies from Scripps College, Claremont, CA. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, she moved to Amsterdam, NL in 2019 where she now lives and works. You can find her artwork at sarahpedlow.com.

Annette is a fiber artist, who has taught the historic colcha embroidery stitch nationally and regionally through the Embroiderers’ Guild of America. Her background is as a juried artist and teacher at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, El Rancho de Las Golondrinas, Casa San Ysidro and Gutierrez-Hubbell Historic houses, as well as the Albuquerque Fiber Arts Council, Albuquerque BioPark/Aquarium, Sandia Mountains Chapter EGA and Las Aranas Spinning and Weaving Guild. Her work currently is in the permanent collection of the Guizhou Provincial Art Museum in Guiyang, China, and the Museum of Spanish Colonial Arts.

As an EGA member of the Sandia Mountains Chapter in Albuquerque NM, Annette manages the colcha embroidery education materials that were compiled and kept current for 13 years. The materials are available in digital format to any EGA chapter or member. Sandia Mountains also publishes and sells pattern books on colcha embroidery, which Annette also manages.

Currently, Annette is teaching colcha embroidery in Zoom sessions for the National Hispanic Cultural Center with the support of Sandia Mountains Chapter. She will resume stitching sessions when health restrictions permit at two sites in Albuquerque NM each month.

Annette is a regular volunteer at New Mexico’s only living history Museum, El Rancho de Las Golondrinas, demonstrating all manners of working with churro sheep wool fleece from carding, spinning, dyeing, weaving and embroidery.

Diane Herrmann won EGA’s Gold Thread Award in 2015 and has taught within EGA, ANG and the Windy City Chapter of EGA both regionally and nationally. She has affiliations with EGA, ANG, NAN and NETA. Diane has several publications and presentations over the years to include “Diaper Pattern and Needlepoint” in Crafting by Concepts. Accomplishments and awards have been granted to include the Jean Thomas Howard Scholarship as a teacher in 2009 as well as NAN Exemplary in 2009, 2012 and 2015, among several other recognitions. Diane teaches one of EGA’s latest Individual Correspondence Courses: Techniques for Canvas Embroidery.

Naomi Smith is an Indigenous Artist and Educator. She is actively involved in sharing traditional teachings with others. She focuses on the ways of the Indigenous people of the Woodlands and Northeastern region from a historical and contemporary perspective often through the story of beads.

Her artwork embraces ancestral designs in the form of bags, adornment, and accessories using quillwork, beadwork and other indigenous methods and materials. Naomi’s work has been exhibited across Canada and internationally. She has shown at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington DC, New York City, the Vancouver 2010 Olympics and participates in numerous events throughout the year.

“Honouring our traditions is my voice within and beyond my Culture and Community. Traditionally there is no word for “art” in Native languages yet artistry and visual expression are critical in defining who we are as Indigenous people. It is this path I wish to exemplify through my teachings and my work.”

Wafa Ghnaim is an American-born Palestinian businesswoman, writer, and artist. Wafa began learning Palestinian embroidery from her mother when she was two years old.

Throughout her life, she traveled alongside her mother for exhibits, lectures, and demonstrations around the U.S. from folklore festivals in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to elementary schools in Portland, Oregon. Today, she travels the world teaching Palestinian embroidery skills across the diaspora to students who have long yearned to connect with their artistic and cultural heritage.

Dr. Sharbreon Plummer is an artist, strategist, storyteller and educator with over a decade of experience in arts and community engagement roles. Her upbringing in southern Louisiana informs her interest and investment in how culture and ancestral memory act as influencers of personal expression and contemporary work, specifically within the African Diaspora and Global South. Her areas of focus and research include:

Black women’s labor and artistic production
Fiber art + craft based practices
Oral history and cultural preservation through storytelling
African American material and visual culture
DEI-based initiatives
Systemic racism and erasure in arts based settings

Dr. Plummer received her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in 2020. Her award winning dissertation was: Haptic Memory: Resituating Black Women’s Lived Experiences in Fiber Art Narratives

Sarah Pedlow is an artist working with embroidery and cultural preservation. In 2009 while in Budapest for an artist’s residency, she visited the Ethnographic Museum and fell in love with the traditional clothing and embroidery. The visit inspired her to seek out women who stitch a particular style called Hungarian written embroidery in Transylvania, Romania, and start the education and preservation project ThreadWritten in 2012. She has been lecturing and teaching cultural embroidery workshops since 2014 and now leads stitching retreats in Europe. Residencies in Iceland; Oaxaca, Mexico; and Holland, as well as embroidery study in Ukraine and Portugal, inform her current practice. She holds an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, and a BA in Studio Art and French Studies from Scripps College, Claremont, CA. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, she moved to Amsterdam, NL in 2019 where she now lives and works. You can find her artwork at sarahpedlow.com.

India specializes in contemporary and ethnic surface embroidery techniques including Yemenite Jewish and Yemenite Israeli embroidery, clothing embellishment, and fabric collage. She also teaches courses on embroidery design, Middle Eastern costume construction and embellishment, and nontraditional needlepoint and blackwork. Her articles on these subjects have appeared in Threads and Needle Arts magazines. An EGA Certified Teacher, India is the recipient of two EGA Legacy Scholarships and one Research Fellowship Grant. In 2017, she presented a lecture on “Embroidery, Clothing, and Feminine Identity in Jewish Yemen” at the Casper College Humanities Festival and Demorest Lecture.