Keynote
Victoria Findlay Wolfe - artist, guild leader
Victoria Findlay Wolfe is a New York City-based award-winning quilt artist, teacher, and author whose work balances modern, traditional and art quilting styles. A farm girl raised in Minnesota, her influences are heavily based on her grandmother’s scrappy colorful double knit polyester quilts which started her on this textile journey.
Her quilts have traveled the globe with notable exhibits across the US and in Japan, Australia & UK. Victoria won ‘Best in Show’ at the first QuiltCon in 2013 with her quilt, “Double Edged Love,” the first in her large series of double wedding ring quilts, for which she is well-known. She was honored to be featured in the Craft in America: Quilts episode in 2019 on PBS. Currently, her "Option Expedition" quilt series is on display at the International Quilt Museum.
Her quilting books include: 15 Minutes of Play, Double Wedding Rings, Modern Quilt Magic, Playing with Purpose, and most recently, The Quilting Experience: A Celebration of Community & Patchwork Patterns (September 2024). Victoria also designs quilt patterns, acrylic templates, fabrics, and more, available at her online quilt shop, VFWquilts.com.
Victoria is the founder of the New York City Metro Mod Quilt Guild. She is actively involved in the quilting community and has served as a board member of the International Quilt Association, the Quilt Alliance, the International Quilt Museum, and the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts.
Dynamic Guild Programming on a Budget
Lyric Kinard - The Global Quilt Connection
The Global Quilt Connection is the premier online resource for connecting quilters and guilds with online educational resources. We can help Quilt Guilds find virtual programming, listing virtual teachers from around the world and offer live online Sampler Platter events where our fabulous instructors show off their favorite techniques. We also support healthy guilds leadership with our Guild Representative roundtables. Quilters can find public enrollment live-zoom and on-demand workshops sponsored by independent teachers, shops, and guilds. You can find us at GlobalQuiltConnection.com.
Guild Leadership 101
Belle Brunner - SeamsSewMe.com
Belle began her second career as a hobby quilter and after falling in love with the craft, took an intensive pattern writing course to begin designing and publishing quilt patterns. She focuses on confident beginner patterns and techniques that even advanced quilters love to make. Her patterns and popular Jumbo Alphabet & Number Clips are sold by fabric shops and major distributors. Belle is a current 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, Original Sewing & Quilting Expo and International Quilt Festival. She and her father own a small quilting retreat in the Arkansas Ouachita National Forest where she hosts intimate quilting retreats on their beautiful 45-acre family property. Belle also offers an online Quilt Pattern Tester 101 Workshop and membership for those interested in becoming quilt pattern testers.
Having spent years as a trainer and consultant in the non-profit arena and working with boards of directors in her other business, Belle expanded her Seams Sew Me business to also specialize in providing leadership, governance, consulting and education to the boards of directors of quilt guilds.
Learn more about Belle at seamssewme.com.
Documenting the Stories of African-American Quilt Guilds
A'donna Richardson - Quilt Alliance
A’donna Richardson is a quilter, historian, and lecturer. She began documenting African American quilts in 2016 until the COVID pandemic. Through grassroots efforts, she single-handedly documented over 35 family heritage quilts. In 2022 she began consulting and researching quilt documentations at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive for a 3,000+ African American quilt collection. From this work she was inspired to establish an African American Quilt Documentation Study Group and a public access African American Quilt Archive & Registry.
She is a retired military veteran, with a BS in Finance from Regis University. She has studied Quilt History at the University of Nebraska and taken graduate courses in Art and History at UC Berkeley. She is currently at the University of Maine working on a Graduate Certificate in Digital Curation. A’donna is also on the Board of Directors for the Quilt Alliance and the American Quilt Study Group.
How Saving Your Guild's History Can Ensure Its Future
Amy Milne - Quilt Alliance
Amy Milne has been the executive director of the Quilt Alliance since 2006. She has over two decades of experience as a nonprofit administrator, educator and artist. Amy has overseen the expansion of the Quilt Alliance’s oral history projects, including the creation of the Go Tell It at the Quilt Show! project, as well as Quilt Alliance events: Quilters Take Manhattan/a Moment and the Not Fade Away: Sharing Quilt Stories in the Digital Age conference.
To learn more about the Quilt Alliance, click here.
How Saving Your Guild's History Can Ensure Its Future
Emma Parker - Quilt Alliance
Emma Parker has worked for the Quilt Alliance since 2012, and has helped to develop the Go Tell It at the Quilt Show! program and streamline and revise the QSOS interview and training process. She has collected and edited over 400 Go Tell It at the Quilt Show! interviews at International Quilt Festival, QuiltCon, and the International Quilt Museum. She holds degrees in Folklore & Library Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Camilo Sanchez - IQM Curator of Exhibitons
Camilo Sanchez holds a BA in Industrial Design from the Xavierian University of Bogota (Colombia) and MA in Museology from the University of East Anglia (UK). Since 1999, he has worked in museums and cultural centres as exhibition designer and museum consultant. He has developed projects in several museums around Colombia and abroad and before moving to Lincoln he was responsible for the complete renovation of the National Museum of Colombia.
Moderator
Meg Cox
Meg is a professional journalist and author who has lectured to hundreds of guilds and groups and written about quilts for dozens of publications. A longtime reporter for the Wall Street Journal, she is now a staff writer for Quiltfolk magazine. Her published books include a resource guide, The Quilter’s Catalog. She serves on the board of the International Quilt Museum and is past president of the Quilt Alliance, a nonprofit focused on the oral history of quilts. Meg has been making quilts since her mother taught her in 1988 and is a proud member of the Manhattan Quilters Guild and Central Jersey Modern Quilt Guild.
To learn more about Meg, click here.
Sarah Walcott - IQM Collections Manager
Sarah Walcott holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Master of Arts in textile history with a concentration in quilt studies from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Before joining the team full time, she interned at the museum in collections, exhibitions and education since 2014. As collections manager, her responsibilities include accessioning and deaccessioning objects, preparing objects for photography, preparing and receiving shipments, processing loan agreements and contracts, maintaining the IQM database and other functions to preserve the museum's collection.
Jamie Swartz - IQM Collections Assistant
Jamie Swartz holds a Bachelors of Art in Art History from Minnesota State University-Moorhead and a Master of Art in Material Culture and Textile Studies at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. As the Collections Assistant, Jamie assists in the accessioning recent acquisitions, care of the collection and photography. Before joining the IQM staff full-time as Collections Assistant, Jamie worked in Exhibitions where he assisted installation, built mounts and designed lighting.
Carolyn Ducey - IQM Curator of Collections
Carolyn Ducey oversees new acquisitions and ongoing care of the museum’s collection. Ducey earned a Masters of Arts in American art history from Indiana University in 1998, and her doctorate in Textiles, Clothing & Design, with an emphasis in quilt studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2010. Her research focused on 1840s chintz appliqué signature quilts made in the Delaware River Valley.
Moderator
Leslie Levy - IQM Executive Director
Leslie Levy is the Ardis & Robert James exeutive director of the International Quilt Museum. After earning her Juris Doctor from the University of Nebraska's College of Law, Leslie worked in both private and public service. As Chief of the Consumer Protection & Antitrust Division for the Nebraska Department of Justice, Leslie gained extensive legal and real-world experience as she honed the skills required to manage teams, work under deadline, balance budgets, and find creative solutions to diverse challenges.
What started as a curiosity about one of America's iconic storytellers, manifested itself into the opportunity to lead the internationally acclaimed Willa Cather Foundation and provide the opportunity to grow an international organization as well as broaden Leslie's skillset in academia, networking, outreach and fundraising. Leslie's unique international and work experiences chartered the course towards the International Quilt Museum.
