About this Site

Welcome to the Quilting Gallery. I’m pleased you dropped by for a visit. I’m Michele Foster (aka Mishka), owner of this site.

Michele Foster, aka Mishka

I started this site back in December 2007 as a way to combine my passion for quilting and my work life as a freelance web developer. Building client sites for 10 years, I wanted a site of my own to “practice what I preached” to my clients.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would become what it has today, 1.5 years later. And best of all, the ideas keep coming. Look for even more exciting features to be added at the end of Summer 2009.

A Little About Me

I made my first quilt around 1994 at a class in Aurora, Ontario. Sadly, the store no longer exists. It was a quillow, which I gave to my parents for Christmas, or to my mom for Mother’s Day. I sure wish I knew about labelling quilts back then, as I’ve forgotten the exact details. I made a few other quilts on my own after that first class.

In 1998, I started my own business, WizarDev – Web Development Solutions and took a long hiatus from quilting.

In the Spring of 2002, I moved to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada’s gorgeous Capital. For a few years, I took on various long-term contracts, some government, some not. During this time I continued to operate my own business, which left little time for quilting.

A few years ago, I decided to only do freelance jobs for a wide variety of clients allowing me to improve my skills in many areas and, best of all, to work from home again full-time. Finally, some free time to quilt again.

The Quilting Gallery Site

The Quilting Gallery site features an active blog with over 150 free quilting and patchwork projects and tutorials, tips and tricks, videos, guest bloggers, and frequent special features. I’m very pleased to promote so many wonderful quilters on my site.

This site is also home to the Quilting Bloggers directory, launched May 28, 2008. I built the directory as a way to bring quilters together from all over the world. The first year, more than 2,800 quilters joined, from 61 countries. As of April 2010, there’s more than 4,000 bloggers from 69 countries. Join the Facebook Fan Page for the Quilting Bloggers directory.

In August 2008, I attended my first big quilt show, Nashville AQS. Wow, what an experience that was. It was at this show, that I started telling people about my vision for the Quilt Shop Locator. I am forever grateful to those that gave their feedback, advice and suggestions on how the Locator could work for them.

In May 2009, I attended my first-ever Quilt Market, and officially launched the Quilt Shop Locator. I met so many wonderful people at that show, and left feeling inspired, energized and filled with lots of ideas for the future.

I hope you enjoy your visit here. It’s been a fantastic journey so far. I’m always looking for new content and guest bloggers, advertisers and sponsors, and quilting friends. You can follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook, subscribe to the monthly newsletter, or send me an email.

Happy Quilting,
Michele