People
Karyn Valino
Owner
My degree is actually from Ryerson’s Media Arts program, where I majored in photography. My first creative loves were paper, bookbinding, photography and collage. Along the way, I also took woodworking, stained glass and neon signmaking classes. It wasn’t until I was working in New York City that I discovered sewing and immediately fell in love with making my own clothes.
Alexis Da Silva Powell
My earliest making memory is obsessively weaving construction paper. So obsessively, in fact, that I quickly ran out of construction paper and took to shredding any paper I could get my tiny hands on. Always one to encourage my creative pursuits, my mom allowed me to paint wall-sized murals in the kitchen and on the windows looking out into our backyard — worms were my speciality.
Carolanne Graham
Instructor
My education is in English Literature and Librarianship and sewing obsessions started early for me. I suffered devastation in Grade 7 Home Economics when my teacher gave me an A- on a very complicated hot dog pillow. I made 9 more cushions before I got the A grade I thought I deserved (and before the teacher refused to mark any more pillows!).
Julie Sinden
Instructor
I grew up with a mother who is a fibre fanatic, in a house full of yarn and fleece and looms and spinning wheels — so i was crafting from a very young age, doing everything from sewing, knitting and dyeing to needle point and cross stitch. In 2002, I set off for the mountains of BC and did a three year textile program at the Kootenay School of the Arts, a very small and eclectic, but wonderful school.
Lizzy House
Guest Instructor
I think most creative endeavors start in childhood, and I attribute my start to my mother allowing me to be who I was. I was solemn, thoughtful and serious. She also let me dress myself from the time I could make moderately reasonable choices. She never made any decisions about who I was, or what I was going to be, she just let me be, and that shaped me into what I am, and how I treat my work.
Sherri Lynn Wood
Guest Instructor
"Sherri Lynn Wood teaches improvisational quilting as a creative life practice, and is considered an expert innovator and leader in the modern improv quilting movement. Her best-selling book, The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters: A Guide to Creating, Quilting & Living Courageously (Abrams, 2015), provides scores, or frameworks, for flexible patterns and creative exploration, along with practical instruction in stitching techniques and intuitive colour."