Quilts for the 21st Century (Nov. 12, 2012 – Jan. 15, 2013)

Sarah Vedeler, award winning quilt artist, pattern designer and teacher, brings an inspir ational perspective to quilting. Sarah’s signature style and use of beautiful embroidered appliqué designs created absolutely stunning works of art. Sarah loves to share her talent with quilters and share her works of art all over the world as her quilts have been to China, England, France and Korea just to name a few places. Sarah’s love of appliqué and machine embroidery has elevated machine embroidery to a whole new level in the quilting world.

Sarah learned to sew when she was about six years old. Using her mum’s 1964 Bernina Record, she made clothes for herself and others (including her dolls!) and dabbled in home décor projects. On her 18th birthday, her parents gave her a Bernina 801 Sport so that Mum could have her own sewing machine back. Sarah continued to make more clothes, and accepted her first paid commission to make gowns for a new hair salon. The 801 Sport went off to University with Sarah and was well used as she earned first her Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Studies, and then her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Brighton, England.

In 1998 Sarah moved to the United States (she is British by birth), leaving the sewing machine at home in England while she focused on her career as a software engineer and project manager. All was going extremely well and then in 2001 Sarah became pregnant with her first daughter, Heather. Her once very analytical and organized brain totally “reformatted”, sending the much used left brain into hibernation while the creative right brain took over. During the pregnancy, creativity took the form of lots of knitting—mainly tiny baby clothes. When Heather was born in January 2002, Sarah borrowed a sewing machine and made lots more clothes for her growing baby. In November of 2002, the borrowed sewing machine had to be returned to its owner, and Sarah decided that the time had come to purchase her own machine. Little did she know that this new machine would take over her life!

Sarah is a mother to two beautiful daughters, Heather and Jasmine, for which she named two of the quilts on display. Sarah is a full time designer of quilts featuring “embroidered appliqué”, her signature method of creating appliqué using an embroidery machine.