Jean’s interest in the needle arts was acquired at a very early age. Her mother was always busy with handwork including knitting, sewing, embroidery, and quilting. Jean always wanted to participate, so her mother taught her the basic needlework skills. At that time, quilting did not interest Jean. What she enjoyed was sewing doll’s clothes and later on, sewing her own clothes.

Upon reaching adulthood, Jean bought all of the craft-oriented magazines. One day, while looking through a McCall’s Needlework magazine, she found a picture of a quilted tea cozy in a Clamshell pattern. Having lots of scrap fabrics from dressmaking and other related crafts, Jean decided to try making one. Not realizing that this was an appliqué design, she turned all of the edges under and stitched them in place with a running stitch. When she got to the quilting part, she had to do another running stitch right beside the first one.

Recycle Toucans Or Three Cans
Or Four Cans

“Not quite the way I would do it today, but this was my first quilt project. At Christmas time that year, everybody I knew got a tea cozy!” she says. "In the early 1980s, there were no quilt shops, no classes, and very few magazines featuring quilting."

Jean started creating her own designs with those first tea cozy projects. When she started quilting, she would begin by following the directions, but then start experimenting. She would ask herself, “ What if I turn the block this way instead? Why not try doing the border like this? Maybe I could put a different block here.” She enjoys being able to create something unique from pieces of fabric, and loves choosing the fabric, developing a design, sewing, and finishing. In short, all parts of the process!

After the tea cozies, Jean began making wall hangings. She used “cheater panels” designed to be made as dolls, quilted them, appliquéd them to a burlap backing, and sold hundreds of them at the local craft show. She then started making quilts, mainly using the trial and error method.

Jean continued making wall hangings, tea cozies and tote bags, too. She even began experimenting with some of her own designs which were usually based on traditional quilt blocks. “Even today I feel that my work is very much based on the traditional,” she says.

In 1982, she felt confident enough about her quilting to ask to teach a night school class for her local school board. “Looking back and realizing the limited quilting skills I had then, I can’t believe I had the nerve to ask for such a job,” Jean says. However, the Co-ordinator of Continuing Education’s reply was, “Sure, that would be all right. What night would you like to teach?” He did not request a résumé, samples of her work, nor lesson plans! Jean began her teaching career with a class of 10 students. She spent weekends preparing her lessons and making samples, and taught her classes on Tuesdays. The following term, her classes were made up of new students as well as many returning students who were eager to learn more. As Jean continued learning and discovering new techniques and methods, she added them to her classes as well.

Two years later, she was hired by St. Lawrence College in Brockville to help create the Fiber Arts Certificate program for quilting. She not only wrote the curriculum, she also had the opportunity to teach all parts of it. She now has a Fibre Arts Certificate in quilting.

Her work at St. Lawrence College became known and led to an invitation to teach at Quilt Canada in Waterloo in 1985. Since that time, Jean has taught at 5 of the Quilt Canada conferences as well as for many quilt guilds and organizations across Canada and in the United States. She will be teaching a seminar on Publishing Your Patterns at Quilt Canada 2006. For the past three years, Jean has also been teaching at the International Quilt Markets held in Pittsburgh, Portland, and Kansas City.

Jean’s greatest honour was being named Teacher of the Year in 2003 by the Canadian Quilters’ Association. “It is wonderful to be recognized by one’s peers and, at the same time, a truly humbling experience. Many people worked on my nomination submission for that award but Janet Rice-Bredin and Marjorie Francis deserve special mention for initiating and coordinating the process,” Jean says.

Jean became interested in combining photography and quilts and started the Pop-Out Picture quilt series which has been her most successful line of patterns. Last year, she designed picture quilts using photographs printed on fabric printer sheets. “ Whatever you see on your computer screen, you can print on fabric! This opens up a whole new world of combining fabric and photos and also appeals to those who are interested in Scrapbooking,” Jean says.

Jean has always been interested in combining photography with fabric and quilting. She has tried every method introduced, including photo transfers,
photos photocopied on fabric, fabric printer sheets and cyanotype printing.

At the moment, her favourite method is printing directly on treated fabric with an inkjet printer. She also uses actual photographs in her quilts. Her most successful patterns have been those that include pictures.

“I think we all have those boxes and envelopes of pictures that we need to display and enjoy! But even with all the new technology, my work still has a very traditional look. Over the years, I have tried all the new techniques that came along, but I still keep returning to the traditional quilting style,” Jean tells us.

Jean has been designing and publishing patterns for quilters since 1997. She has been encouraged by students and colleagues as well as Colleen McMahon from Annabelle’s Quilt Shop in Brockville . Colleen gave Jean her start in the wholesale-retail market, by buying every pattern she published to sell in her store as well as giving her space in her booth at retail shows. This gradually established Jean as a pattern designer.

Nellie Holmes, who worked at the shop, had also started designing patterns. She and Jean decided to have a booth at their Thousand Islands Quilter’s Guild show in 1998. They decided to call themselves Upper Canada Quiltworks. Christine Baker, a friend, fellow quilter, and new pattern designer, joined them in 2000. Nellie, Christine, and Jean each have distinctive quilting styles and offer a wide variety of patterns to quilters.

Although they were not sure about it, their friend, Lesley Wilson, convinced them that they needed a website. At the time, Lesley was just starting out as a web designer and needed the practice, so she offered to design and maintain their site at no cost. Jean says, “We will be eternally grateful to Lesley, for as we all know now, businesses today just don’t seem to exist
without a web presence. We have had 4 different web site designs since that time, and in July 2005, introduced our most ambitious site yet. It was

designed by Sue Wilkins who is also a quilt pattern designer with her own site. Each designer has her own distinctive site within the main Upper Canada Quiltworks site. We also have a shopping cart with secure payment options and a newsletter available by email.”

For the past 3 years, Jean has also been creating patterns for Northcott Fabrics. Her latest free pattern is Christmas Tea with Santa based on the fabric line by the same name.

Jean has won many awards for her quilts which have appeared in several magazines.

“I have had the opportunity to meet so many quilters from across the country. It’s hard to believe it all started by making a tea cozy!” says Jean.