Virtual Lecture Series

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.

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.

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.

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.