What is Hello Stitch?
Hello Stitch is a virtual studio that offers online classes and workshops. We believe that learning how to sew is about building skills. By taking a class with Hello Stitch, we will help you build these skills and provide the support you'll need to love what you create! Hello Stitch is also an actual quilting studio with a computerized Innova longarm specializing in edge to edge design ready to help bring your quilting projects to completion.
Who is Hello Stitch?
With the concept of creating a modern interpretation of the quilting bee, our online community is built through social meet-ups, classes and social media. Our goal is to provide a virtual place for people with a common interest in sewing to come together to share, learn, and grow together.
We love sewing and believe that there is something special about working with textiles. We look forward to sharing that feeling with you!
Terri Carpenter
Terri's passion for sewing began with quilting (over 20 years ago!) and has evolved to include many different varieties of textile art. She currently enjoys expanding her handmade wardrobe, embroidery, quilt design and longarm quilting. When not at the studio, she enjoys being in the great outdoors getting inspired for her work. She loves to create things that fill people's lives with cheer and beauty, and enjoys helping others on their handmade journey as well.
Liat Rorer
Liat was forced to learn to sew in Home Economics class, and she found it about as appealing as the creamed chipped beef on toast she had to cook. Years later, when she began to sew on her own, she found a passion that combined her creative, analytic and practical sides. We joke that her quilts are huge because she just can’t stop herself. When she’s not in the studio, she might be in her kitchen making something other than creamed chipped beef.
Teachers
Antonia Armada
Antonia is a Bay Area artist with an extensive background in textile art & garment sewing. She has been sewing professionally for 12 years including work in lingerie production sewing as well as costume production and design.
Chelsea Hard
Chelsea made her first quilt perched on the edge of the couch with her sewing machine on the coffee table. Now practicing better ergonomics, she is an avid quilt maker and enjoys all aspects of sewing by both hand and machine. When not purchasing craft supplies she’ll only use once or actively avoiding organizing her studio, she is the President of the South Bay Area Modern Quilt Guild and an award winning jam maker. Chelsea currently resides in the East Bay with her two sewing machines.
Valerie Gibbins
Valerie is a native of Oakland and a lifelong sewist. She recently moved back to the Bay Area after attending graduate school in Philadelphia and working as a Textile Designer in North Carolina. Her obsession with fabric and passion for creating with her hands has provided her with knowledge in multiple areas of design: apparel, textiles, and accessories. In addition to her design knowledge, Valerie brings her teaching experience to Hello Stitch, where she hopes to encourage confidence in everyone's creative abilities.
Beth Galvin
Beth started sewing at age 7 and can sew everything from casual knit tops to tailored jackets to over the top party dresses. She has a popular sewing blog, Sunnygal Studio where she shares her tips and tricks. Beth loves to help people get the pattern they love to fit the way they want. She is brilliant at adding stylish little details that make your projects look professional and special, but what's even better is that she has figured out how to make it easier!
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Claire Sherman
Inspired by a neighbor’s Victorian crazy quilt, Claire started making her first quilt at age 13. There were no quilters in her family, so she taught herself, making it up as she went along. Twenty years after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, with a BFA in ceramics, she rediscovered her love of quilting and improvisational quilting is still her favorite method of design. Claire has taught workshops in quilting and other crafts for adults and children throughout California.
Carolyn Weil
Happiest with a needle and thread in her hands, Carolyn is a prolific quilter with may stitches and techniques under her belt. A teacher at heart, she loves to shares her extensive knowledge with novice and experienced students alike.
Nancy Williams
Nancy has been sewing for longer than she cares to say - clothing for the kids and grands; wedding dresses; tailoring and for herself. In addition to garment making, she began piecing quilts about 30 years ago and mostly quilting them on her domestic machine. After renting time on long arm quilting machines and liking it (a lot), she decided to purchase her own. And so, her studio, A Quilting Fool Longarm Studio, began!
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Fern Royce
Fern grew up surrounded by textiles and what we now call “makers.” She learned to sew when she was very young, but did not begin quilting until the mid 1990’s. She took quilting classes at her local quilting store, learning the basics including the “all cotton” rule. That rule seemed odd when she considered the quilts she grew up with, including the corduroy quilt her grandmother made for her from the scraps of the all the clothes she had made for her grandchildren. In Fern’s experience, quilts meant using what was on hand, using or reusing any type of fabric, including clothing. When you look at her quilts you will see that she often includes repurposed and unconventional textiles in her own quilts, following her own rule: if she likes it, she uses it - from wool to silk, linen, or the unknown.
Pati Fried
Pati Fried studied graphic design in college, but always found herself lingering in the textile department. After graduating and working in corporate marketing for several years, she finally discovered quilting and was hooked. Mixing pattern, color and texture is a perfect fit for her, both as a quilter and a designer. She is a fabric and pattern designer, a popular quilt blogger, and her work has been featured in quilting magazines.
Tara Tucker
Tara is a practicing artist who has been teaching and facilitating the artists at The Creative Growth Art Center in their Rug Department since 2002. She supervises 20 artists that make one of a kind rugs hooked rugs. The rugs have been shown at the Oakland Airport, Pulse Miami Art Fair, The Moss Design Center in New York, the West Coast Craft Fair in San Francisco, CA. and were featured in Oprah's O Magazine and Paper Magazine. Her own traditionally hooked rug, Foreign Relations, hangs in the collection of the American Embassy in Madagascar.
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Vanina Doce-Mood
Vanina has been sewing and creating since she was a teenager, but didn’t start quilting until she was pregnant with her daughter, 9 years ago. She fell in love with it and hasn’t stopped making quilts since then! She loves bright colors and mismatching patterns, and the endless possibilities textiles offer. She lives in a red house in Oakland with her husband and daughter, a dog, a cat, a fish and 4 chickens. When she's not sewing, you can find her on the dance floor of different Bay Area locations teaching dance to kids and adults.
Watson
Watson loves coming to work at Hello Stitch. Mostly, you can find him sleeping soundly in his bed, that is until you put a plate of cookies on the coffee table. It is his mission in life get all the pets and eat all the treats.
Kristen Takakuwa
Kristen learned to sew at the young age of 8 and sewing has been a lifelong habit ever since. She has been teaching sewing to adults and kids for the last 10 years, and loves nothing more than sharing her skills and enthusiasm for sewing with others. Originally a garment sewist, she expanded her repertoire to include quilting as well. When she’s not in the sewing studio, you can find her driving carpools, playing with food and talking to cats.
Julia McLeod
Julia McLeod started her working life in the menswear industry as a textile designer for tailored suits and jackets. Now, as a quilt maker, it's a strange coincidence that she loves nothing more than to use silk necktie fabrics in her work.
All kinds of silks and reclaimed fabrics find their way into Julia's quilts. She is unafraid to cut into heirloom fabrics and vintage blocks if it means bringing them out of storage and into the light of day for everyone to enjoy.
Find out more about Julia on her or in her blog posts See How We Sew.
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Stacey Sharman
Stacey is a textile junkie who started sewing on an antique treadle sewing machine at the age of 8 and was addicted to counted-cross stitch in high school. She loves vintage textiles and has done antique carpet restoration for almost 20 years. She loves the history behind handmade objects and helping people make their own handcrafted history. She also has a habit of falling in love with vintage and industrial sewing machines.
Mariska Miller
Growing up with a crafty grandma who showed her how to knit sweaters for her Monchichi, Mariska Miller always had an appreciation for all things handmade. She went on to study fashion-design and then put her knowledge to good use working on movies in the costume department. Nowadays she loves working on unique textile creations in her studio.