Donna Thomas

Donna Lynn Thomas has been sewing since the age of four and passionately quilting since 1975. She began teaching in 1981, and while an Army wife, she lived in Germany for four years and thoroughly enjoyed teaching at a German quilt shop and various guilds throughout the country. Long out of the Army, the Thomas' have settled in Kansas for good. As a teacher for 40 years and the author of 20 books since 1987, she has also contributed articles and written columns on various quilt-related subjects to numerous publications over the years. You can see Donna on Craftsy as well as several QNN-TV episodes.

Believing that piecing quilts should be a pleasure, not a fight, her focus is on skills mastery and techniques that enable her students to enjoy frustration-free sewing. As someone who has a family of BERNINAs, she is always excited to see BERNINAs on Stitchin' Heaven cruises and retreats.

Donna and her husband provide staff assistance to one sunny golden retriever, Ellie, and a miniature apricot poodle, Buddy, whose real name should be Trouble.Needle in a Hayes Stack.

Wendy Mathson

Wendy is a teacher, pattern designer, lecturer, inventor of quilting tools, and the author of A New Light on Storm at Sea Quilts – One Block, an Ocean of Design Possibilities (C&T Publishing). She taught for Empty Spools Seminars at Asilomar in Pacific Grove, California, in 2012 and was a quilting instructor for Palomar College in San Diego for eight years. Wendy is also a founder and past president of Prayers & Squares, The Prayer Quilt Ministry, an interfaith non-profit organization with about 1300 chapters in 13 countries.

When Wendy started developing patterns for prayer quilts, she found she had a knack for writing simplified instructions and developing streamlined construction techniques. Her background in graphic design and printing was a natural fit, and she soon started working for publishers of quilting books as an editor and illustrator.

She loves to share many of her quilting tips and tricks in the classroom, developed over almost 30 years of teaching. Many of her students agree that they learn as much from these tiny “pearls of wisdom” as they do from the class itself. Long-time residents of southern California, Wendy, and her husband own and cultivate a small vineyard that produces three varieties of wine grapes.