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Kathy Tidswell

683 Route 104, Burtt’s Corner N B, E6L 2B7
www.kathytidswell.com email: kathy@kathytidswell.com phone: 506-363-3560

Kathy Tidswell’s interest and attention to the details in nature are a continuing thread in her life. She graduated from the University of New Brunswick with a BSc in Honours Biology and worked as a fish health technician and later a forest genetics technician for Environment Canada. After ten years of marriage, she started a family and chose to stay home to raise her two children in a two hundred year old farmhouse.

Around 1989, Kathy began her quilting career with traditional machine piecing and appliqué. In 1992 and 1993 she hand quilted two quilts, discovering that she really didn’t enjoy it. While making her beautiful small even stitches, she was wishing to be up in her sewing room! In 1991 an American guest teacher, Ann Boyce, introduced members of the Fredericton Quilters’ Guild to the world of using machines for everything from mock hand applique to machine quilting. With her creativity sparked, Kathy became hooked on the possibilities of machine work.

Over the next few years, she took courses from a number of Canadian and American quilt teachers and machine embroidery specialists, collected an extensive library of quilting and machine embroidery technique books and took drawing, water colour and oil painting lessons. From these, she developed her own techniques for painting on fabric and using free motion machine embroidery to produce thread painted works of art as well as quilted wall hangings and wearable art. Her creations are unique and her style is recognizable as her own. Her thread painted birds and landscapes cause the viewer to pause and wonder how they have been accomplished.

The level of her work has been recognized by her peers and she is a juried member of the New Brunswick Crafts Council, selling her work in the Fredericton Garrison District and at seasonal arts and craft markets. She has had pieces chosen for the Canadian Quilters’ Association/Association canadienne de la courtepointe National Juried Shows, the Grand National Juried Quilt Exhibitions and the Ontario Network of Needleworkers Juried Show. In 1999 she won the Canadian Quilters’ Association Award of Excellence for Wearable Art and in 2005 she received Honourable Mention. Her work has been published both nationally and internationally. In 2007 she received a New Brunswick Crafts Foundation Professional Development Award towards her study with Alison Holt in Oswestry, United Kingdom. In 2009 her work was exhibited in a solo exhibition entitled Natures Thread at the Charlotte Glencross Gallery, Charlotte St. Arts Centre, Fredericton, New Brunswick. In 2010 her work was juried into a group exhibition This Land Is Your Land at the Playhouse Annex Gallery, Fredericton.

Since 1993, Kathy has been sharing her knowledge and techniques through teaching for guilds, needlework festivals, fabric shops and sewing machine shops. She has taught from coast to coast including for the Mayflower Quilter’s Guild biannual retreat in Pictou, Nova Scotia, at Ready Set Sew in Halifax, Nova Scotia, at Creative Sewing and Needlework Festival in Toronto, Ontario, at Gibsons Landing Fibre Arts Festival in Gibsons, British Columbia and at three Quilt Canada conferences. In the summer of 2008 she taught at the inaugural Fredericton edVentures vacation learning in Craft and Culture and was invited back to teach in 2009 and 2010.

The highlight of her career has been receiving the Canadian Quilters’ Association/ACC 2005 Teacher of the Year Award. She enjoys working and teaching in both the quilting world and the art world.