About Me

When my best friend from high school told me she was going to have a baby, I knew I’d make a quilt. However, I felt my first effort had to be completely authentic: a historical pattern, hand pieced and hand quilted, so that’s what I did. My friend, who had a daughter, was delighted with the quilt. Forty-plus years later, I still make quilts, but now I use a sewing machine for more of the work. I still find ways to incorporate hand sewing, though.

I was born in Montreal, Canada, but have lived most of my life in California, alternating between the Bay Area and San Diego. My career as a newspaper copy editor and page designer is reflected in the graphic and photographic influences in my quilts.

I began to study quilting while living in the Bay Area in the 1980s and benefited from the excellent teaching of the late Roberta Horton, who taught me every quilt is a scrap quilt. In San Diego, I have taken several mixed media classes with Jane LaFazio, who got me to try many surface design techniques that have helped keep Dharma Trading art supplies in business. Well, the sketching class didn’t work out. And my dear friend, the late Carolyn Hartsough, was an immeasurable influence on my fabric selection — shopping — and how each fabric plays against another.

I have won awards for my quilts – for five years I owned the “Anything Goes” category in an annual show in Marin County. I have had a one-woman show and exhibited in many group shows around the state, curated a traveling exhibit of baseball quilts, written magazine articles about quilting and served on the board of the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles. I’m a member of two critique groups in San Diego.