Richard Bloedow is a 26 year veteran of the embroidery industry. He started his journey with Gunold + Stickma in the late 80’s. Currently he is the president of GS USA, Inc. and works in close partnership with SewingMachine.com, Brother International, and Applied Academic Labs. Richard is an expert in digitizing and teaches embroidery theory and techniques. He also teaches on vinyl cutting, sublimation and direct to garment printing.
John Deer is the most awarded embroidery digitizer in the world. As a 3rd generation embroidery guru, John is one of North Americas leading experts on digitizing and embroidery for the corporate and home marketplace. John has an extremely unique history in the embroidery digitizing industry as he is one of the last remaining Schiffli Masters. John learned and apprenticed under Swiss Schiffli Master Digitizers (then known as “punchers”) over 30 years ago, before computers even entered the digitizing world. Since then, he has won 30 separate digitizing awards and wrote the book on digitizing called “Digitizing Made Easy” which has sold over 40,000 copies. John has produced 29 instructional and educational “step-by-step how to” DVD’s, which apply to embroidery enthusiasts of all levels. He has given hundreds of workshops and seminars all over the world on digitizing, embroidery techniques and how to make money with embroidery. Given John’s unique training, family history, and vast embroidery knowledge, he is truly a master embroidery digitizer.
Luke Hunter started his professional photography career shooting parties and other events, while earning a Master’s In Business Administration from Auburn University in 1998. His studio expanded to include offerings in Family Portraiture, Seniors, Babies, Head Shots, Products, Weddings, and Live Performances of Dance and Theater. Over the years, Luke’s focus in Photography has concentrated on Performing Arts Photography and generating photographs for the marketing of the products produced by his wife’s companies, Belliboos Designs and The Applique Circle. As part of his association with The Applique Circle, Luke is generating a series of educational products to help small business owners generate high end photography for their product marketing when hiring a professional is not in the budget
A lifelong crafter, Lisa Potts is the Creative Product Instructor for The Rhinestone World. She holds online webinars, one-on-one virtual and personal trainings, as well as online tutorial videos to showcase the possibilities with vinyl, rhinestones, and other crafts. Lisa spends her day thinking up great crafting projects and teaches others along the way. Her weapon of choice is the Silhouette Cameo.
Dan Kane is an Inside Sales Representative at Transfer Express. He’s been in the heating printing industry for four years after beginning his career at Transfer Express as a customer service representative. Dan has represented Transfer Express at many trade shows since the start of his career. He has presented at numerous industry seminars and classes such as the National Business Media (NBM), Embroid Me, Everything Embroidery Market, and Stahls’ TV.
Dawn Chace is the owner/digitizer of Creative Appliques and Creative Cuts SVG. She has been creating and sewing for over 4 decades. The moment she turned on her first embroidery machine, she was hooked. Dawn takes great care in creating every single design individually. All her designs are digitized manually then tested to ensure the highest possible quality. Creative Appliques offers professional quality digital machine embroidery appliqué designs, embroidery fonts, embroidery designs, and in-the-hoop designs. Creative Cuts SVG offers files for cutting machines and print and cut machines. She is a featured designer with Silhouette School’s Silhouette University.
Hillary Dunham is the owner and creator of Mint Julep Monograms– an online monogram boutique and Mint Julep Market– a storefront- both based out of Huntsville, Alabama. In the past 7 years, she has learned through trial and error, laid hands on a few monogramming machines in prayer, kicked herself for saying “Yes! I’m sure we could do that!” and had a few successes along the way.
She is most proud of her company’s outreach project with Kenya Relief- which has donated an embroidery machine to their orphanage/ medical clinic/ school and employed 2 women. She traveled to Kenya twice in 2016 to train and plans to go back in 2017.
She has some pretty fancy business awards and drives a minivan that she swore she never would. Hillary speaks at conferences around the country about fundraising, business, social media and juggling it all.
She has an amazing husband, Jason, and 3 pretty awesome children.
I have been drawing since I can remember. My mom taught me to sew when I was in third grade. I’ve made clothing for myself and my kids, and lots of crafting projects. Then I discovered I love working with computers too. I was so excited when I saw my first embroidery machine and found out I could create embroidery designs from my own artwork and let the machine sew them out for me. I opened my website www.pegboardcrafts.com in 1998 where I specialize in appliqué and in-the-hoop designs. I started working with Embird and Embird Studio in 2004 and absolutely loved it. I am now the List Mom of two Yahoo Groups – AbsolutelyEmbird and Embird101 – where I am able to share my knowledge and help others enjoy machine embroidery as much as I do. I enjoy traveling to teach Embird classes at The American Embroidery Conference and my own Fly with Embird seminars. I began doing online classes in 2014 which are available as video classes on www.flywithembird.net. I am very excited to be joining The Everything Embroidery Market in Biloxi in 2017.
Jamie Omahen, CraftChameleon.com owner, has loved creating and making since childhood. That love plus education, and experience led to the beginning of a craft supply business for professional crafters. Join her and 1000’s of other crafters in the Facebook group Craft Chameleon Blanks where we learn, share and have fun crafting.
Jamie’s past exploits have found her as a guest blogger on Silhouette School, Cutting for Business and Teri Johnson Creates; teaching classes at the conferences across the South and the Midwest plus hosting classes in St Louis from time to time. She is thrilled to be back at EEM this year, so please come and join the fun!
LIBBY ASHCRAFT
