Kim's passion for quilting began with making quilts for her children. After purchasing a long arm machine nine years ago, Kim's quilting really began to take off. She has become known as a specialist in colouring using ink pencils, pastels, pigments and pens to achieve her designs, although she also makes other contemporary styles as well as traditional such as civil war reproduction quilts. Kim has won several awards and enjoys teaching her techniques and giving confidence to quilters.

www.kimbradleycreations.com

Sue Daley started patchwork 31 years ago and began designing patterns in 1997. She has added new technology to traditional English paper-piecing to make it more achievable and enjoyable. Her range of pre-cut paper shapes, acrylic templates and other accessories has proven popular with beginner and experienced quilters alike. Sue also specialises in needleturn appliqué, fine hand quilting and embroidery.

www.busyfingerspatchwork.com

Noriko has devoted herself to creating quilts and teaching since 1985, working full-time in her studio in Tokyo and also at home in Chiba, Japan. Her quilting style, based on scenes from nature, has been likened to impressionist paintings and her work exhibited in Europe, Japan, Korea, South Africa, Taiwan and the US. Recently Noriko's Impressionist Quilts were the subject of an exhibition in the Art Quilt Gallery in New York, USA. Noriko's 'confetti' technique uses many tiny pieces of fabric and thread, to depict realistic landscapes.

www.norikoendo.com

Katrina is a trained archaeologist, but has been successfully teaching her own quilt designs for the past 10 years. She enjoys working with many piecing and appliqué styles, and has recently enjoyed making hand-appliqué quilts with an antique look. These quilts, named after houses featured in Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice', are popular with her students and have won several awards, including Fourth Place in the 2009 Sydney Quilt Show for 'Pemberley' and a First Place in the 2010 Sydney Quilt Show for 'Netherfield'.

Kay's passion for textile art developed during a 20-year stay in the US . From traditional quilts, she fine-tuned her skills by broadening her scope to cover landscape/pictorial styles, contemporary and miniatures. Kay has won several 'Best of Show' awards in international exhibitions, including two in Canada, and has exhibited in France, Holland, Japan, New Zealand and Australia. Her quilt, 'Under the Canopy', won 'Best of Show' at the 2010 Sydney Quilt Show and won the National Quilt Award at AQC 2011.

www.kayhaerland.com

Michele has been quilting for 25 years and her passion is appliqué. Much of her work has been inspired by William Morris, designs from architecture of the time and the Arts & Crafts movement of that special era. Her specialty is machine appliqué with hand embellishment. She has had the honour of gaining many awards for her quilts, including two SA Festival of Quilts Best of Show awards – in 2005 and 2007.

www.michelehill.com.au

Chris lives in the Blue Mountains, NS W and has been teaching for 11 years. She specialises in creating and teaching foundation-piecing designs and techniques and has taken traditional blocks to new heights by originating new designs from traditional block patterns with clever adaptations. Her favourites are Mariner's Compass and New York Beauty blocks, and medallion quilts – all popular with her students. Her quilts have won prizes at the Sydney Quilt Show in the last three years and she has had over 40 quilt projects featured in Australian quilting magazines

www.chrisquilts.blogspot.com

Rita is from Sandpoint, Idaho, USA and is an expert at imagining and creating colourful patterns. She loves to explore the endless design possibilities and construction options available by using strips which are sewn into tubes. Since 1980 she has been fine tuning her design and patterning skills while developing her own techniques. Rita is process oriented and works intuitively with lots of experimentation and mistakes. Her classes are fun filled and information packed and she prefers to think of her mistakes as intuitive decisions. Rita is author of the book Totally Tubular Quilts and has been featured in an episode of Simply Quilts.

www.ritahutchens.com

Known for her quilts in vivid colours depicting the Australian bush, Gloria is adept at pushing boundaries while still managing to instil confidence in students. Much in demand as a teacher, Gloria has also curated eight exhibitions of Australian quilts in the USA , judged at major quilt shows and appeared in many magazines. She has also written two books, Luminous Landscapes and Quilted Symphony, both published by C&T. Gloria won the Rajah Award at AQC in 2009.

www.glorialoughman.com

Deborah is a passionate teacher of domestic-machine quilting and appliqué. She has been teaching for 11 years with the conviction that quilters gain a great deal of personal satisfaction and pride when they complete their own quilt. She taught at AQC in 2010 receiving high accolades from students in her class. Deb incorporates a holistic approach in her teaching, where all avenues are addressed to give students the skills required to machine-quilt themselves. She is a multi-award winner quiltmaker and teaches full time all over Australia and soon in New Zealand.

www.deborahlouie.com.au

Yorkshire-born Philippa discovered a love of sewing as a child and made her own clothes from the age of 13. She is a trained clothes designer and worked for five years designing lingerie, and later had her own business making bespoke wedding and evening dresses – in Saudi Arabia. She started quiltmaking in 1996 and was hooked! Then in 1999 she discovered art quilts and modern quilting techniques. Philippa now makes only original quilts with intricate curved piecing or machine appliqué using her own handdyed fabrics, with free-motion machine quilting and trapunto. Philippa has won awards in the UK and at Paducah and Houston in the US.

www.philippanaylor.com

Vikki entered the world of quilting in 1991 at the urging of her sister. A non-sewer at the time, Vikki attended a beginner's class and quickly fell in love with the art of quilting. Now a full-time professional quilt-artist, designer, international teacher, lecturer and author, Vikki's quilts have been featured in many books, national publications and exhibitions. She has won 32 awards in national and international competitions and exhibitions. Vikki is also the founder (1999) of the USA's biennial Sacred Threads Quilt Exhibitions, a two-week display of original artwork that explores themes of spirituality, joy, inspiration, healing and grief.

www.vikkipignatelli.com

From the USA , Lesley is an internationally known quilter and mixed media artist with a passion for photos, colour and the written word. Her latest book, Fabulous Fabric Art with Lutradur takes a new material to a new level. Lesley defines Lutradur as 'the magic in the middle' – an art material that combines the best properties of both fabric and paper. Lesley is well known in the textile art world and is a contributing editor to Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine. Lesley's TAP Transfer Art Paper won Best Innovation of the Year award at a major USA trade show in 2011.

www.lesleyriley.com