SMP Quilting Festival

March 11 - March 15, 2024

MEET THE SPECIAL EDUCATORS & JUDGES

Jane Hauprich

Jane is a self-taught free motion quilter that began her quilting journey on a domestic sewing machine. She now is a professional award winning longarm quilter who specializes in custom free motion quilting. Her goal when teaching is to spread as much knowledge as possible and enable more successful quilters in the future.

Bethanne Nemesh

A classically trained artist with degrees in Art and Art therapy who has been mastering the art of free motion machine quilting for over 23 years! She has won many major awards in all levels of national and international quilting. She has taught quilters all over the world to love quilting and find their own voice of creative expression through the stitched line.

Edyta Sitar

Edyta’s love for fabric began at a very young age - when she used her mother’s drapes to create her first fabric project! As the founder and owner of her company, Laundry Basket Quilts www.laundrybasketquilts.com, Edyta is proud to carry on her family tradition that fabrics and threads have seamlessly stitched together through the generations. Her true passion and quilter’s spirit shine through her classes, workshops, and presentations. She travels all over the world sharing her experiences and connecting with quilters of all levels through the inspiring stories about the quilts she makes.

Kimberly Einmo

Kimberly Einmo is honored to represent Janome-America as their National Spokesperson. She is an international author, award-winning quilter, fabric designer and has been a quilt judge for more than twenty years. Kimberly has developed a signature line of Precision Rulers and she is a Featured Artist for the Electric Quilt Company.

SPECIAL PRESENTER

Stacy Lewey

Stacy Lewey is a Marketing and Product Manager as well as one of the owners of Sew Steady and Westalee Design. She has become an expert in all things Sew Steady for the last 10 yrs and Westalee Design in the last 5 yrs. She coordinates over 20 educators worldwide on sharing Westalee Design with the world.

Kimberly Sandberg

Kim helped on the development team for PS Designer and PS Catalog, and enjoys designing, editing and teaching all about this great software for quilters. Kim loves the process of choosing or creating designs to complement and highlight her piecing.

Mark Martin

Mark Martin is the Sales and Customer Relations Manager for the Grace Company. With a team of 9 wonder Account Executives, he manages the day-to-day Sales operations with both customers and dealers. Mark has been with Grace Company for over 10 years and started as an Account Executive.

Anthony Widerburg

Anthony Widerburg has been with The Grace Company for a year starting as a customer service representative and quickly took on wholesale accounts. He comes to us with a strong retail background, primarily focused on sales and customer service. In his time off, Anthony enjoys traveling, concerts, watching movies and live theatre.

Janna Mathews

Janna Mathews is the Assistant Sales Manager with the Grace Company. She joined the company a little over a year ago as an Account Executive and since being promoted she has had the opportunity to work with both customers and dealers across the country. When she is not at work Janna is an avid baker and loves bringing in tasty treats to share.

Kristina Whitney

Kristina was selected to be a member of the Handi Quilter Quilt Your Desire Inspiration Squad in 2017 and has been featured in magazines, show programs, and on the Handi Quilter truck. Kristina is also a member of many local quilt guilds and enjoys continually learning and improving her skills.

April Yang (YT: Coolripa)

Sewing, DIY, and upcycle fashion content creator since 2011. I teach and inspire people to turn old clothes into something new whether it's everyday fashion or cosplays. With over 440 videos on Youtube, April has garnered 2.25 million subscribers and counting. Teaching millions of people how to DIY their clothing. You can also find April on Tik Tok, having fun with her family and friends.

Jarek Erznoznik

Jarek initially started as a quality control and repair for grace machines. They now work as an Account Executive for the Company. Outside of work Jarek enjoys spending time painting, being creative, and loves spending time with their Labrador retriever, Eva.

Allegra Erznoznik

Allegra works closely with Grace dealers and customers and has recently started attending Quilt Shows and creating virtual events. When they're not working, you can find them crocheting, adding a new hourglass to their collection, or snuggling up to their adorable cats, Samson and Bertholdt.

Melinda Romero

Melinda is SMP's personal account executive at Grace and provides world class customer service. Melinda graduated from Salt Lake Community College and is currently based in West Valley City, United States.

Kelly Latrielle

Kelly is a National Account Trainer at Juki America Inc. An accomplished and performance-driven territory manager with a strong background in operational management, budgeting, staffing, inventory control, training and development, and customer service.

Aubrey Hartman

Aubrey Hartman is an Area Sales Manager with Butler Robotics. Aubrey has a long history with thread, fabric, and a sewing needle. She has been sewing since she was 5 years old when she took a kid’s quilting class and has never looked back. She has a degree in Theatrical Costume Design and enjoys making her own clothes and especially her yearly Halloween costume. Aubrey learned about quilt making when she took a job at a local quilt shop and quickly found herself a new hobby. Now, she is learning all about long arm quilting and long arm automation with her new position with Bulter Robotics and is loving every minute of it.

Sam Fung

Sam, an Educational Coordinator, has been sewing for the past 45 years. Prior to joining Janome 15 years ago, he owned a custom sewing business where he made everything from couture wedding gowns to home decor and even taught students of all ages how to sew. Sam is definitely Janome’s resident notions expert - he probably has enough notions to open his own shop!

Becky Thompson

Meet Becky Thompson, the innovative owner of the popular YouTube channel and blog, Power Tools With Thread. Becky is a seasoned quilter and machine embroiderer who loves exploring new techniques in the stitching industry. Her channel and blog are dedicated to inspiring fellow quilters and embroiderers to embrace new software and machine technology in their projects.

Coleen Swettman

In the mid 1990’s Coleen become fascinated with machine embroidery. It was love at first sight. She loves every aspect of embroidery from digitizing to seeing the design stitched out on the finished item. Coleen started with the earliest version of embroidery software and enjoys the many new advanced features and ease of use that are available in software today. If an item can be embroidered – she’s probably embroidered on it.

Drea Goodine

Drea Goodine is the Education Manager at RNK Distributing.

Joe Zundl

Joe Zundl is the Sales Manager at Reliable Corporation.

Emily Dunlap

Emily Dunlap is an expert in pressing and ironing technology and enjoys sharing her knowledge with sewists around the world.

Erica Bottger

Erica has been with the AccuQuilt team for almost 8 years working with sales, videos, marketing and more. She’s a veteran quilter with a background in garment sewing and costuming, and says she started sewing as soon as she could hold a needle. When she isn’t behind a sewing machine, Erica loves spending time with her family, including her 3 little grandchildren.

Joanne Nielsen

Joanne Nielsen has a passion for working with customers. Since starting at Brewer in 2008, Joanne has been listening to the needs of our quilt shops, solving problems for our retailers and implementing many of the programs and processes that make Brewer their distributor of choice. She leads Brewer’s friendly, helpful and knowledgeable team of customer service and sales representatives. Joanne loves connecting with our Brewer customers every day and introducing new fun and exciting items they can bring into to offer the best of the best selection to their customers.

Katherine Burrell

Katherine Burrell has been with Grace Company for a little over 8 months as a customer service representative. She is excited to become your Account Executive. She comes to us with over 20 years of customer service and account management experience. Katherine is passionate about gardening. She spends as much time as she is able outside cultivating her plants and flowers. In the evenings you will find her and her husband sitting outside on their porch reading a good book, sipping on a diet Pepsi, and enjoying the beauty of her yard. Katherine and her husband are empty nesters with two children, a son and a daughter and one new granddaughter.

Laurel Daniels

Laurel Daniels is an Account Executive for the Grace Company and has been with the company for around 1.5 years. Laurel has had the opportunity more recently to start building out the Ambassadors and Influencers program. She is excited for the opportunity to continue to grow the company and herself. She loves learning and growing her knowledge of the quilting world. She has done this by attending several quilting shows and working with the education team on different projects. As an Account Executive she also has the opportunity to work with dealers all throughout the world. She is excited and looking forward to helping you have a creative and fun journey as you dive further into the quilting world.

Mary Beck

Mary Beck is an Educator with BERNINA of America. She grew up watching her mom busy at the sewing machine making clothes for the family. It looked like fun, but Mary didn’t really “get it” until she was married and had a machine of her own. Her first BERNINA was a pre-loved Aurora 440QEE. She wasn’t sure she wanted an embroidery module, but has since changed her mind! Piecing and quilting are her favorite things, but just about any sewing, serging or embroidery project is fair game.

Miriam Coffey

Miriam has had a lifelong love affair with textiles. It all began at a young age when her mother taught her to hand embroider. Growing up in a house of makers she was encouraged to go after her love of creating art. She attended Maryland Institute Collage of Art, majoring in Fiber Art. In school, she taught herself to sew and never stopped. After graduation, she began her adventure into the fabric world – her many roles have included fashion designer, manager of a modern quilt store, co-owner of a long arm quilting business, fabric sales representative, and most recently as an educator for Janome. While working for Janome she was introduced to machine embroidery. At first, she was hesitant to embrace this new technique, but once she saw that it could fit into her aesthetic she didn’t look back. She is now on a personal mission to show the modern community what machine embroidery can do. She has won several local and international awards for her quilts and fashion design.

Nicholas Turcan

Nicholas Turcan is a multitalented and very creative individual. His journey into quilting began in 2012 with one quilt that quickly turned into several, which made him realize that he needed a better way to finish these quilt tops than a small, domestic-sized machine. In addition to long-arm quilting for customers, he has started to teach free-motion quilting workshops, where students can learn the confidence and skills required to further their own quilting abilities.

Nicole Gilbert

Over the past 10 years, Nicole has lead quilt alongs, taught countless classes, demonstrated sewing machines, and quilted an insane number of quilts. Her first love is sharing quilting with new sewers. There is nothing better than watching that ‘aha’ moment dawn.

Pam Heller

Pam Heller is an international educator and cutting expert for AccuQuilt. For the past 5 years, Pam has taught quilters how to get the most use out of their AccuQuilt GO! fabric cutting systems at quilt shop events, guild meetings, and to tour groups from all over the U.S. and Canada. Pam’s passion for quilting began 20 years ago when she discovered a local quilt store in her small Colorado town.

Rosemary Castillo-Sartin

Rosemary’s mother sewed, her grandmothers sewed, her aunts sewed…. Therefore she sews! She has sewed for over 40 years and is now a Brother educator. Her favorite Brother Machines are the PR680W and XP3. You can often find her sewing in her studio listening to a good audio book.

Sara Vetser

Sara Vetser is a Brother ambassador and educator. She also creates content for various social media outlets in order to create an online brand awareness and presence. Sara also specializes in incorporating sustainable sewing and quilting by using recycled material.

Shauna Westergard

Shauna Westergard is a mother of four with her tech husband. She is a Colorado transplant that loves living in the mountains and Mountain Dew. She grew up in a family of quilters and remembers playing under the quilting frames while the aunts stitched on quilts for bridal showers. She considers herself to be an “accidental longarm quilter”, because she inherited her longarm before she had ever finished piecing a quilt top. Once she got the longarm set up she jumped in with both feet and quilted over 60 projects in the first year she had the longarm.

Linda Bratten

Linda has been a quilting/sewing teacher, in the Columbia, MO area since 2008. Linda has recently self-published a series of workbooks to enhance her Free-Motion Machine Quilting classes and has created several patterns and machine embroidery designs. She loves to mix different mediums and techniques to create unique one of a kind fiber art.

Barb Lewis

Barb is a National Educator for Baby Lock with 10 years of experience teaching sewing and serging projects. She is always trying to find something new to sew or serge. She loves to see all the possibilities. Outside of sewing and quilting, she enjoys spending time with her grandchildren and basking in the Utah weather.

Cindy Hogan

Cindy resides in Georgia with her husband. She has a BS and MS from the University of TN in Special Education and was a full time Special Education teacher until 2003 when she decided to change career paths and use her knowledge of PE-DESIGN® and Education to be a freelance National Product Training Specialist for the for all Brother Software Programs. Cindy is an internationally recognized Brother Software expert. She began working with the PE-DESIGN® software when it was first introduced and began teaching all Brother Software thereafter. She is also national recognized as an expert on the Brother Scan-N-Cut and machine embroidery. She teaches classes on the Craftsy Platform and has been a guest instructor on the Hit TV Show “It’s Sew Easy”.

Carrie Hanson

Carrie Hanson is the face of Gotcha Covered Quilting and began her career as a crafter at a very young age. Carrie was raised in an environment of crafting, crocheting, knitting, needlepoint and cross stitching. It was only natural for her to pick up quilting where her first quilt was a tulip applique. This quickly drove her into a true passion and obsession with quilting and now Carrie has over 20 years of being a master quilter under her belt. Like all quilters, Carrie finds true bliss in being able to express her full creativity in using vibrant colors and high quality fabric to her quilts. Quilting is a combination of pure passion, creativity and freedom.

Belle Brunner

Belle began quilting in in her mid-40’s and quickly fell in love with the craft. After taking an intensive pattern writing course, she began designing and publishing quilt patterns. She focuses on confident beginner patterns and techniques that even advanced quilters love to make and believes that all people, of any age, can learn to quilt. Her patterns are sold by major distributors and The Fat Quarter Shop. Belle is a brand ambassador for Benartex Fabrics, Arrow Sewing, Havels Sewing, The Daylight Company, and Oliso. She is a former 2022 Maywood Studio Maker and was a 2023 Instructor for the American Quilters Society Quilt Week, Stitch Fest, The Original Sewing & Quilting Expo and International Quilt Festival. She and her father own an AIRBNB in a national forest where she will be hosting small quilting retreats later in 2024. Belle also has a new online workshop to educate and support quilt pattern testers. Having spent years helping non-profits and boards of directors in her other business, Belle expanded her Seams Sew Me business to also specialize in providing leadership, governance, consulting and education for quilt guilds’ boards of directors. She believes that strong inclusive guilds contribute to strong communities. She leads and teaches with her two leading values: of compassion and understanding.

Julie Slesser

Julie Slesser is an Account Executive at Grace Company. She has over 15 years of client/retail management experience and is committed to keeping her dealers informed. She is willing to do whatever is asked of her and will go the extra mile to make sure your needs are met. She understands that without you, Grace Company would not have been able to grow into what we are today. Julie is always smiling and cracking jokes. She has one of the best personalities. Her dedication towards helping Grace Company grow is evident in everything she does. We are very excited to have her, and she is excited to provide you with all the information needed so that you can have great success. In her time off, Julie spends most of her time with her three adult sons and her husband of 30 years. She enjoys reading while cuddled up with her German Shorthaired Pointer (Captain), crafting, cooking, traveling to exotic places, and camping….er glamping in Utah’s amazing National Parks.

Milinda Stephenson

Throughout her time as a Baby Lock Educator, Milinda made an important discovery. "I’ve learned that people who sew tend to be smart, creative and determined. These are people who make the world a better place—they are givers—the majority of their sewing tends to be for other people. That generous spirit is contagious, and brings me so much joy!" She said connecting with those people is her favorite part of teaching. "We are healthier when we are in community, and teaching engages me in this fabulous community of men and women who love to learn and love to sew." Milinda started sewing since she went off to college and — as she readily pointed out — since her mom stopped sewing for her. She said she's been obsessed with sewing and design since then. She said her favorite thing about sewing is the infinite possibilities it provides. "It allows me to dream of all the things that can be created—those dreams are fabulous therapy—they help me move beyond daily problems and imagine what can be rather than what is," Milinda said. "And there is this wonderful physical benefit—sewing lowers your blood pressure! It is soothing and therapeutic."

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*QUILT FEST BLOCK EMBLEM Coastal Lily pattern by Minick + Simpson a riff on the clasic Carolina Lily design.

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