Madame Askew
Madame is a time traveling tea aficionado, obsessed with tea, fashion & the proper uses for headgear. While she is often the center of tea inspired escapades, especially Tea Duelling and Splendid Teapot Racing, and a great advocate of Compliment Duelling, Madame loves nothing so much as meeting charming and talented individuals across time, throughout the universe, and in tea houses wherever she may appear. When Madame is not preoccupied with tea, she operates a small atelier where she creates fanciful and charming bespoke garments, underpinnings, and hats for ladies and gentlemen.
Find Jocelynne’s regular teatorials on her Madame Askew Facebook page.
Barbara Emodi
Barbara Emodi is a mother, a new grandmother, and a teacher. But whatever happens in her life, she keeps sewing. She has worked as a political communicator and now as a teacher in her formal life. She has also written extensively on sewing. She has been a frequent contributor and contributing editor of Threads magazine and the Australian magazine Dressmaking with Stitches. Her first book “Sew…the garment-making book of knowledge” was published in May 2018. She sews everything on her vintage machines. More information and her blog can be found at: https://sewingontheedge.blogspot.com/.
Darlene Girton
Darlene Girton has over 20+ years quilting, long-arm quilting, and working with and on Singer Featherweight machines. She is also a nationally recognized machine quilting and Featherweight maintenance instructor and therefore she loves equipping quilters with new skills for making quilts and using their sewing machines, especially Featherweight machines. Find out more about her work on her website, her Facebook page or on Instagram.
Tonia Hogner-Weavel
Tonia Hogner-Weavel, Cherokee citizen, has been researching and making Cherokee clothing for the past 30 years. Named Cherokee National Treasure in 2012 for textiles, Hogner-Weavel has won numerous local art show awards and has been featured in an episode of the Cherokee television series, Osiyo, Voices of the Cherokee People.
She designed the Cherokee clothing worn in Diligwa, a living history Cherokee village circa 1710. She has also been the costumer of the Cherokee National Youth Choir fashioning tear dresses and ribbon shirts for the 50 member choir. Two of her embroidered caped deerskin jackets are on exhibit in Cherokee Nation facilities.
She has also acted as costumer for the play, Nanyehi, based on legendary Cherokee historical figure, Nancy Ward*.
“My goal is to create garments that reflect the dignity and respect of Cherokee people and to be as historically accurate as possible. I also enjoy blending the present with the past for contemporary designs.”
After a lifetime of work in the Indian Education field, Weavel has served as Education Director at the Cherokee Heritage Center in Tahlequah for the past eighteen years.
*Coincidentally, Lara and Lisa are descendants of Nancy Ward.
Lara Neel
Lara Neel took up garment sewing on the Singer 328k she bought to repair bedsheets after a coworker told her that it’s possible to sew t-shirts without a special sewing machine. Her sewing adventures have produced jeans, t-shirts, and dresses, but she’s most proud of making the first bras to truly fit her in almost 20 years. She’s the author of Sock Architecture and Crafting the Resistance and an instructor on Craftsy and Bluprint.
The Vintage Sewing Center & Museum, Inc.
The Vintage Sewing Center & Museum, Inc. (also known as the M) opened in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 2017. It boasts a vintage sewing machine collection of more than 1,000 examples, hundreds of which are on display at any one time. Each room of this museum has fully restored machines set up at tables where visitors are encouraged to sew. The M will be offering special tours to registrants throughout the Vintage Sewing Event weekend.