Ellen Munnich

Ellen's first professional design job was at age 14 when she designed and produced costumes for 3 theatrical productions at a local Summer Stock Theatre. She has had her own businesses for many years and worked as a consultant in the field of entertainment and marketing. During her years as Managing Director of Canada's largest one-nighter entertainment agency, Ellen obtained a certificate in Fashion Design and Textile Design. She left King Entertainment in 1994 to start Critical Image Inc., a firm specializing in advertising and marketing for small business. Ellen sold Critical Image and started quilting in 2001. In March 2002, she bought her first domestic quilting frame along with the PC Quilter. In September 2002 she founded Munnich Design's Quilt Recipes.

Since 2002, Ellen has digitized over 1750 individual patterns and edited many more from other designers. She is also a gifted technical writer and teacher. She has published Manuals and Videos for the PC Quilter, PCQ Designer, Pro-Q Designer and others. Her "Classroom in a Box" series is accepted as the definitive work on the subject it covers.

In addition to being the principle designer for Munnich Design's QuiltRecipes, Ellen is support and spokesperson for Pro-Q Designer and Pro-Q Panto Lite. She is currently working on additonal projects including a line of quilt piecing patterns and embroidery patterns, new "Classroom in a Box" sets, and support for a new robotic system called the Machine Quilting Robot.

She currently quilts using a Gammill Optimum and a Machine Quilting Robot along with various domestic machines, and dabbles in embroidery digitizing.

Sher Hunt writes...

I have been sewing as long as I can remember. As a little girl it was doll clothes which as I progressed to adulthood became clothing for myself and family. I was always an avid embroider, doing mostly hand work, but when I discovered that I could drop the feeddogs on my sewing machine, I experimented with thread art.  Around 1970 I started to hand quilt miniatures about 2x3 inches which I sold at doll house miniature shows.   Finding the quilting fascinating, I then took up full size quilts where I pieced the tops by machine and completed them with hand quilting. Since handquilting took a long time, I did them just for myself.

In 2002, I saw a domestic quilting frame you could use to quilt with your machine. I was hooked, and instantly purchased one.  I quickly discovered I was not very good at free motion quilting so the next logical step was computerized quilting which allowed me to make quilts to give as gifts.

Even though I was now using a computerized system for quilting, I keep on with my hand embroidery as the thread art was not entirely satisfactory. Eventually, I ended up with carpal tunnel syndrome which forced me to purchase an embroidery machine. Naturally, I started digitizing my own patterns and working with Munnich Design to help convert their library of quilting patterns to embroidery patterns. While recently retired, from Ford, I am now working longer and harder then I ever did as a computer programmer!  However, I LOVE my new profession: digitizing for computerized quilting and embroidery.

Candace West writes...

Sewing has always been part of my life.  I began to make my own clothes in high school.  There were four girls in my family and not enough money to go around for new clothes.  If we wanted something special, we had to create it!  Prom gowns lead to wedding dresses, maternity clothes and then baby clothes!  We always loved playing dress up so as grown ups we continued the tradition with elaborate costumes for every holiday or renaissance fair. 

When my daughter and I got into horses, I began to make clothes and equine accessories to liven our experience.  At the time saddle pads and tack luggage came in only a few colors all very plain.  My work was noticed at the shows we went to and there a new business was born, Barn Cat Creations, LLC.

I was an early adopter of computers and always kept myself on the “bleeding” edge of technology.  In my career in the mortgage industry whether I was managing sales, customer service or programmers I attempted to keep pace with the evolution of personal computing.

About 10 years ago, I took a quilt class offered by my DSM dealer and I fell in love with quilting.  It became my passion and with our move out of the city away from my horsey clients, I soon devoted all of my spare time to quilting.  With experience I started to branch out and come up with original designs of my own.

In 2005 I made the plunge and purchased an A1 Elite longarm machine equipped with CompuQuilter.  This allowed me to marry my artistic side with my geek side and allowed me to start designing my own digitized quilting designs.

Quiltin Fairy writes...

Born and raised as a country girl in Missouri, I started learning to sew at a young age from my granny. She taught us how to make Barbie doll clothes. Her favorite thing to sew was what she called "pantaloons". She said ALL dolls were to have them.

At age 11 my parents turned in a drawing I did to some company. And they wanted to send me to art school. At the time I wasn't interested in it. Now that years have past, I wish I had gone. But it seems that life takes you a road you are destined for. I started longarm quilting 17 plus years ago...Yes, they had longarm's then. At this time in my life it seems that drawing has come back into my life, not that I haven't done any just not as often as I do now. I love to digitize, I just wish I had more arms to do all the things I love most. Quilting and Digitizing. I've been told I have a vivid (wild) imagination, which helps immensely in creating. Along with the tops I receive to quilt. They also give me such wonderful ideas just by looking at them.

I've had 3 longarm's and loved them all. I know have an A-1 with S/R and a compuquilter(I love this awesome computer). I didn't think I would ever have one, but knew I wanted one soon as I seen it sew...Like most, I was mesmerized by it. I love gardening when I get the time and taking care of my DH and pup dog Cheri. They are my most cherished things I love the most.