Have you ever wondered where designers get the inspiration for their designs? Well, inspiration comes from many places. For me, it can come from seeing something in a store, on a website or in a book. It can also come from seeing a garment or accessory that someone is wearing. My newest design, “It Takes All Colors Snowflakes” afghan, was inspired by a knitted sweater in my own closet! I don’t always get inspired by my sweaters, but this sweater was truly inspiring to me! It’s an older sweater and has seen its better days, especially around the bottom of the sleeves. But I love the snowflake pattern on it and the bright colors that were used, so I knew I had to use this design in a crochet pattern someday. Here’s a photo of the sweater (and a close up photo of it) for you to see:
Snowflake Sweater inspirationClose Up of Snowflake Sweater
Here are photos of my snowflake afghan to compare to the sweater:
It Takes All Colors Snowflakes afghan
Close Up of Snowflakes afghan
I used 8 colors (plus black) of Red Heart “With Love” yarn to make this afghan. It’s worked in the Fair Isle crochet technique in which each row is worked on the right side. The tails are all turned into fringe on the left and right edges afterward, so there are no tails/ends to weave in (yahoo!). Fair Isle crochet is a great technique that yields a fabulous finished design! And since the non-working color is worked over instead of being carried across the back, the afghan is reversible, too! Here is a close up photo of a section on the back of the afghan to see:
Back of Snowflake Afghan
You can find this pattern on the Mainly Crochet website here. If you’re not familiar with Mainly Crochet, it’s an online magazine started by Michele Maks, the former editor for Crochet World magazine. I met Michele in person at a CGOA Conference (possibly in 2009, but I could be wrong about the year!). Michele purchased quite a few of my crochet patterns during the years that she was the editor of Crochet World! She started out as a designer several decades ago, before she was the editor for Crochet World magazine. She’s a fabulous designer and a great magazine editor with a keen eye! A few years after leaving Crochet World, Michele decided to start her own online magazine called “Mainly Crochet”. The Mainly Crochet website went live in the summer of 2013 and has been going strong ever since! It is a subscription magazine that costs $24 per year. There are over 190 patterns on the website now. They’re all accessible to paid subscribers to download as PDF files onto their computers or tablets. Mainly Crochet has a lot of fabulous patterns by many talented designers! There are patterns for all skill levels and for all types of projects: from afghans to accessories to doilies and lots more! Check it out!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this look at the inspiration behind my “It Takes All Colors Snowflakes” afghan design and will give this crochet technique a try.
This is the last stop on the Wiggly Crochet Dishcloths blog tour. Boohoo. I’m sad to see it come to an end! It’s been a lot of fun!
Today, we’re going to visit the blog of Andee Graves. I first met Andee at a CGOA Conference (I think it was in 2009 in Buffalo when I had a broken wrist – I definitely wasn’t able to crochet for a while then!). Here’s a photo of Andee and I, along with Shari White (one of my mentees and a very talented designer) and Joyce Bragg (another very talented designer), waiting to meet with the editors at the Buffalo conference (from left to right: Shari, me, Andee and Joyce):
Waiting for Editors at CGOA Conference in 2009
If you’ve been reading my blog for more than a few weeks, you might recognize Andee’s name. I wrote a blog post for Andee’s blog tour of her new Texting Mitts booklet, published by Leisure Arts, on February 10th. Here’s a photo of the front cover of her booklet:
Texting Mitts front cover
Andee’s texting mitts are fun to make! I made 2 pairs of them when I was preparing for her blog tour. You can read more about this booklet on my Feb. 10th blog post or on Andee’s blog!
Andee is a fantastic newer designer (newer than me). She is a bundle of energy and a wealth of information! And she’s a really nice person, too! Andee already has over 50 published designs in just the last 3 years! Wow! Way to go, Andee! You can see all of Andee’s published designs on her Ravelry designer page. This is one of my favorites of Andee’s designs:
Andee’s Heart Pillow
This heart pillow was published in Crochet World magazine’s Feb. 2012 issue. Isn’t it pretty?
Please hop on over to Andee’s blog to read what she’s written about my Wiggly Crochet Dishcloths booklet and the dishcloth she’s made from the booklet.
Since this is the last stop on my blog tour, I will be picking and announcing a winner for the free autographed copy of my Wiggly Crochet Dishcloths booklet on Friday. If you haven’t entered yet, just leave a comment by 6PM (Arizona time) tomorrow on my blog post from either Jan. 27 or Feb. 9. I wish you all good luck in the giveaway!
Today we’re visiting a very talented crochet designer named Kara Lyon. Kara designs amigurumi dolls that are absolutely amazing! Here’s a photo of one of her dolls:
Kara Lyon’s Viking Doll
Isn’t that awesome? To see all of her amigurumi dolls, visit her website.
When I first saw Kara’s amazing dolls online, I contacted her and encouraged her to attend the CGOA Conference in Manchester, NH in 2010, where we met face-to-face. We had previously communicated through e-mails and it was wonderful to meet her in person! Here we are at that conference:
Susan and Kara
Kara took my wiggly crochet class at the conference and I think she really enjoyed it. She designed her own wiggly crochet rug the following year. You can see and read about her rug on her blog. It’s very creative!
Today Kara is blogging about my Wiggly Crochet Dishcloths booklet. I can’t wait to read what Kara has written and see what kind of wiggly crochet dishcloth she’s created (she’s so creative!). I hope you’ll visit her blog to read about what she’s done!
If you haven’t already entered to win a free, autographed copy of my Wiggly Crochet Dishcloths booklet, you still have a few more days. Just leave a comment on either my Jan. 27 or Feb. 9 blog post to enter. Good luck!
Our 3rd stop on this blog tour is with the very talented Ellen Gormley of Go Crochet. Ellen has been blogging for many years and always has something wonderful to share with her readers! She’s a very talented designer and one of the experts on the Knit and Crochet Now show.
Ellen Gormley (right) and Susan Lowman (left)
In 2010, Ellen took my Beginning Bruges Lace class at the CGOA Conference in Manchester, NH. She really took to Bruges Lace and started designing in it almost immediately. Last year, she had a booklet published by Annie’s called “Learn Bruges Lace”! Here’s a photo of Ellen and me in that class:
And here’s a photo of Ellen’s Bruges Lace booklet:
Learn Bruges Lace front cover
If you missed my blog post about Ellen’s booklet, you can read it here. Bruges Lace is a lot of fun. I’m not sure which I like better: Bruges Lace or Wiggly Crochet!!! They’re both wonderful crochet techniques!
Last year at the CGOA Conference in Reno, I had some of my wiggly crochet projects on display in the Designer Showcase that the extremely talented Doris Chan spent many hours organizing! Thanks so much, Doris!!! Many crochet designers participated in the Designer Showcase and it was a huge success!!! Here’s a photo of my Wiggly Fish Rug on display there:
Wiggly Crochet Fish Rug
I self-published this pattern last year. It’s available as a PDF download right here on my website (under “Patterns”), on Ravelry, and on Craftsy.
If you’ve never tried wiggly crochet, please download my “FREE” May Flowers Hot Pad & Coaster pattern on the Coats & Clark website. That way, you can give this crochet technique a try before purchasing any wiggly crochet patterns to see if you like it. After giving it a try, you might be “hooked” on wiggly crochet (pun intended!) like I am! And if you’d like to make some Wiggly Crochet Dishcloths, you can purchase my Wiggly Crochet Dishcloths booklet on the Annie’s website as a hard copy in the mail or as an instant PDF download for $8.95.
So head on over to Ellen’s blog today to read what she has to say about wiggly crochet and crochet in general!
If you missed the first stop of my Wiggly Crochet Dishcloths blog tour on Feb. 13th, you can still read what Brett Bara wrote on her Facebook page that day. Brett is a super talented lady who wears many hats (and her cat, Fifi, is adorable!!!). You can read her blog and see photos of what she’s up to (and Fifi) on her website. Brett is currently the host of the Knit and Crochet Now show on PBS. Brett was the first editor of Crochet Today magazine for many years. I tech edited for Crochet Today for several years before I met Brett at a CGOA Conference in Manchester, NH. She’s just as nice in person as she looks in her photos!!! Brett is putting on a full day of craft classes called the Brooklyn Craft Camp on Saturday, March 16th in Brooklyn (where else?). I wish I lived closer so I could attend!!! Here’s a photo of Brett, in case you haven’t gotten acquainted with her yet:
Brett Bara
Today’s stop on the Blog Tour is with Kathryn White. Kathy is a very talented crochet designer who has won numerous awards in the CGOA Design Contest in the last 2 years. She’s also a really good friend of mine. We met at the CGOA Conference in Greensboro, NC in Sept. 2011. We quickly became friends and learned that we lived only 130 miles apart! We see each other every month when Kathy drives up here to attend the monthly crochet group that I’ve attended for many years. You can read more about Kathryn White on her blog, her website and her Facebook page. Kathy is a very accomplished thread crochet designer in the crochet world. She’s a great source of inspiration for me! Here’s a photo of Kathy (on the left), the famous Rita Weiss (in the middle) and me (on the right) at the fashion show/dinner at the CGOA Conference last year in Reno, NV:
Kathryn White, Rita Weiss and Susan Lowman
Kathy’s newest booklet of crochet designs is Beautiful Bullions. This is a wonderful booklet of fabulous designs! Kathy never fails to impress me with her designing abilities!!! Here’s the cover of that booklet:
Beautiful Bullions booklet cover
Click here to see and/or order this booklet from Annie’s.
And if you haven’t yet entered to win a free, autographed copy of my Wiggly Crochet Dishcloths booklet, you still have time. Just leave a comment on my blog post from Jan. 27 or Feb. 9 to be entered. There aren’t too many entries yet, so your chances of winning are great!!!
Learn Bruges Lace back coverLearn Bruges Lace front cover
When I taught my Beginning Bruges Lace class at the CGOA Conference in 2010, I had no idea that one of my students would go on to design so much in Bruges Lace. But she did! That student is Ellen Gormley. She not only has had many Bruges Lace designs published, but she’s also come out with a new crochet book/leaflet called “Learn Bruges Lace”, published by Annie’s. You can see and purchase this book at http://www.anniescatalog.com/detail.html?prod_id=90152.
Ellen has done a great job with this book. It includes step-by-step instructions for 10 stitch patterns in Bruges Lace to learn this crochet technique. Once you’ve learned the technique, you’ll want to make some (or all) of the 8 Bruges Lace patterns in the book, which Ellen has designed: 3 hats, 2 scarves, a blanket, a bracelet and a cowl. Each pattern (and each beginning stitch pattern) includes written instructions, as well as a symbol chart. If you haven’t learned to read crochet symbol charts, you’ll really want to learn. Crochet symbols are a visual representation of the project, showing all the crochet stitches worked in the project in symbol form. Here is an example of crochet symbols:
Crochet Symbols
Once you learn to read crochet symbols, you’ll never be the same! You can make many more crochet projects from patterns which are only written in crochet symbols, such as in Magic Crochet and Decorative Crochet magazines, along with Japanese and Russian crochet magazines, such as Duplet. I’ll be teaching a class at the CGOA Conference next week in Reno on Crochet Symbols. If you’re in the area, there is still room for a few more students in this class! You can read about the CGOA Conference and all the classes being offered here: http://www.knitandcrochetshow.com/fall-special-events.asp?i2s3. There are a lot of great classes to choose from, both crochet and knitting!
Back to Ellen’s book! If you’ve never tried Bruges Lace, it’s easy (and fun) to do once you know how. You can use crochet thread or yarn, whichever you prefer. Ellen’s book is easy to understand, laid out well and has great stitch patterns, as well as projects. My two favorite projects in this book are the Spiral Cowl and the Dune Throw. Here are photos of those two projects:
Spiral CowlDune Throw
Bruges Lace uses regular crochet stitches, such as chain, single crochet, half double crochet, double crochet and sometimes treble crochet. It’s just the way the stitches are laid out that makes it Bruges Lace! If you’d never heard of Bruges Lace before, it is a lace technique which originated in Belgium. The “real” Bruges Lace is made with many tiny wooden bobbins that are filled with thread and crossed over each other to create intricate lace. Here is a photo of the bobbins that are used for the “real” Bruges Lace:
Lace making bobbins
Doesn’t that look confusing and difficult? There are master lace makers in Belgium, as well as other parts of the world. They put us to shame here in the US! I love lacy things, so I might learn to do bobbin lace someday, but not for a while. There are many more crochet projects that I’d like to design first!
Crocheted Bruges Lace is much easier to make than this “real” bobbin lace! All you need is a crochet hook and some yarn or crochet thread. You can combine Bruges Lace with crochet motifs in the same project, too. You can use one color of yarn/thread or multiple colors in different sections of the lace.
Here are a few photos of some crochet Bruges Lace that I’ve designed:
Daisy Tablecloth
This is a tablecloth that I designed with colorful center flower motifs which are done in regular crochet (not Bruges Lace). Only the white around the edges of each motif is done in Bruges Lace. This tablecloth was published in Crochet World magazine’s Spring 2011 special issue called “The Joy of Thread”. It was actually on the front cover, too. The tablecloth is made with size 10 cotton crochet thread. You can see all of the projects in this magazine here: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/sources/crochet-world-magazine-spring-2011.
Vail Mountain Wrap (Bruges Lace)
This Bruges Lace Wrap that I designed is a free pattern on the Naturally Caron website. It is made with Naturally Caron Spa yarn. This yarn drapes beautifully and the wrap is very soft! You can download this free pattern here: http://www.naturallycaron.com/projects/vail_mountain/vail_mountain_1.html.
In conclusion, please check out Ellen Gormley’s new book, “Learn Bruges Lace” on the Annie’s website or at your local craft store to learn this crochet technique. You’ll be delighted with the Bruges Lace projects you’ll be able to create with your knowledge of this fascinating crochet teachnique!
I returned home last Monday, July 2nd, from the CGOA Chain Link Conference in Manchester, NH. It was a blast!!! I taught 6 classes and met a lot of really nice crocheters, knitters and tatters there. If you have the chance to attend the conference, I recommend that you go. You won’t be disappointed!
My plane took off from Phoenix Sky Harbor Int’l Airport, heading to Manchester on Tuesday, June 26, 2012. The flight made a scheduled stop in Denver, then continued on straight to Manchester from Denver. That morning, I remembered that a designer friend of mine, Andee Graves, lives in Colorado. I was wondering what flight Andee might be taking, so I watched for her when the new passengers came onto the plane in Denver. To my surprise and delight, Andee got on the plane!!! After I got her attention, we sat next to each other and talked the whole way to Manchester, which made the time pass a lot faster!
The first day of the conference was Wednesday, when I attended Professional Development Day (PDD for short). It was a day packed with information for crochet professionals or aspiring crochet professionals. At PDD, I learned more about designing, tech editing, self-publishing, using social media, teaching and producing crochet videos. These and many more topics were presented by other crochet professionals there. KJ Hay’s presentation about tech editing was hilarious and very creative! Instead of reading the information she wanted to present, she made a little “skit” out of it, complete with her bunny slippers! It was a riot! I’ll be presenting the topic of “Contract Crocheting” at PDD in Reno in September. It should be a lot of fun.
Kathryn White at PDDTerry Kehrer at PDD
At PDD, I sat at a table with Kathryn White, Michele Maks, Theresa Kehrer, Joyce Bragg and Karen Ballard. Here are photos of 3 of them:
Michele Maks at PDD
Then on Wednesday night, I taught my first class at the conference: Symbol Crochet. All the students were eager to learn and did very well in class. It was a little difficult to teach a class after a full day of PDD because I’m a morning person, not a night person! But I persevered and was able to think straight, must to my surprise and delight! I must have been running on adrenaline!
On Thursday morning, I taught my Faux Tatted Necklace class from my pattern with the same name. Here’s a photo of the necklace:
Faux Tatted Necklace
Carlotta and her necklace
Kim and her bracelet
And here are some of the happy students with their necklaces (or bracelets) in progress:
Victoria and me
There was also a mother and daughter in that class. This is the daughter and me:
I was amazed and extremely surprised that one of the students in that class had taught herself to crochet the night before! She was still learning how to hold the hook and thread, but she was patient and persistent and she did great!!!
I had Thursday afternoon off from teaching, so I spent it with one of my mentees, Theresa Kehrer. On Thursday night, they held the Design Contest Awards. Here’s a photo of the center of the display with all the entries, located on the show floor (Note: Not all the entries are shown in this photo, just the ones in the center of the display):
Design Competition Display
I entered my new shawl pattern that I made in the continuous crochet motifs method (I blogged about it on May 19), but I didn’t get a prize for it. Here is a photo of that shawl:
Byzantine Shawl in Design Contest
All of the black around the large red and orange motifs is done with one strand (actually 2 strands because I needed to use 2 balls of black yarn) so there are only 4 ends of black yarn to weave in when you’re done crocheting the shawl instead of 128! I’m thinking about designing an edging for this shawl before I publish the pattern. I think it needs a little something extra. It’s too bad I didn’t add an edging before entering it in the contest. Oh well! Better luck next year!
After the Design Contest Awards came the shopping floor preview, which is always a lot of fun! Who doesn’t love looking at and touching beautiful yarns?
I went to the Dance Party for a little while after that, but left in plenty of time to get a good night’s sleep so I could think straight the next morning to teach classes again! It’s important to me to be my best and think as clearly as I can when I’m teaching. I owe that to my students. And that doesn’t include staying up until the wee hours of the morning!!!
Whenever I have to travel to the East Coast for the CGOA Conference, I start adjusting my internal clock 2 weeks before the conference so I don’t have to try to adjust to the 3 hour time difference in one night! It works great! Over the course of the 2 weeks, I was able to eventually go to bed and get up in the morning 2-3 hours early before I left for the conference, so I was already used to East Coast time when I got there!
On Friday, I taught my Beginning and Intermediate Bruges Lace classes. Both of these classes went well and the students enjoyed learning how to form several styles of Bruges Lace tapes, how to curve them, join them to each other (and to motifs) and loop the tapes over themselves. It was a great day!
That night, the CGOA Annual Member Meeting took place. Normally, I sit with the other members in the audience, but this time I sat at the head table with the CGOA Board members. I had to keep the secret for weeks of me filling a vacancy on the Board: Karen Whooley is leaving the Board due to family matters. This is the first time I’ve been on the CGOA Board in the 10 years that I’ve been a CGOA member. I’m looking forward to giving back to CGOA and helping to improve the CGOA Masters Program (I’m the new liaison to the new Masters Committee: Jane Rimmer and Carol Moore are taking the places of Karen Whooley and Kathleen Sams as co-chairs of the Masters Committee).
On Saturday, I attended my first CGOA Board meeting bright and early at 7AM with the other Board members (I’m glad that I’m a morning person!). However, I had to leave the Board meeting early in order to teach my Shuttle Tatting class all day! Every one of the 11 students in the class learned to shuttle tat at various skill levels. It’s not exactly an easy thing to learn, but they were all patient and persistent students! I’m very proud of every one of them! I can’t wait to see what they create in shuttle tatting!
The Fashion Show and Dinner was held on Saturday night. I modeled in the Fashion Show and pinned a Masters Pin on one of my mentees, Carlotta Craig. Here we are in the pinning ceremony:
Pinning Carlotta!
It was a wonderful night and it was hard to say goodbye to many friends at the conference, as many people leave that night or the following morning. I saw Karen Manthey, Bobbie Matela, Carol Alexander, Kathleen Sams and many, many more friends and colleagues at the dinner and conference. Here is a photo of me at the Fashion Show (in the center) with 2 of my mentees: Theresa Kehrer (on the left) and Shari White (on the right):
Terry, Shari and Me
I taught my last class, Writing Crochet Patterns, on Sunday morning. The students in this class were all very eager to learn more about writing crochet patterns and improving their pattern writing skills! Many of them were newer or beginning designers. I look forward to seeing their design careers grow!
After having lunch with Jane Rimmer and Carol Moore on Sunday afternoon, I walked into the show floor and found myself volunteering to help take down the Red Heart/Crochetville booth. It was a lot of fun! I received many skeins of free yarn and crochet thread for my efforts!!! Normally I wouldn’t accept so much yarn at a conference because I’d have to find a way to get it home! But I knew I had extra space in my second suitcase because I gave out so many handouts in my classes and that space was now vacant to fill with yarn on the way home!!! Thank you very much, Kathleen! I will use the yarn for some crochet designs as soon as I find some extra time to make them! Here’s a photo of Andee Graves wrapping up the boxes on the pallets with plastic/shrink wrap before the driver took them away:
Andee wrapping boxes
All in all, I had a wonderful time at the conference and I’m looking forward to teaching 6 more classes at the CGOA Chain Link Conference in Reno in September! I’d better get to work and prepare those classes before time slips away! It’ll be here before I know it!!!
If you are a crochet enthusiast like me, and especially if you’ve been crocheting for as long as I have, then you have certainly run across the name of Jean Leinhauser. Jean was one of the pioneers and legends in the crochet industry. If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to tell you a little about Jean.
Jean was born in August, 1933 and passed away one year ago, on June 12, 2011. She worked in the needlework field for 4-5 decades! Back in 1964, she was working as Design Director for the Boye Needle Company in Chicago. She had put together a knitting program that could be used in inner city high schools and was asked to do a crochet program, too. But Jean didn’t know how to crochet! So she spent 4 days at home teaching herself to crochet and came up with the crochet program for Boye. She also wrote the information for their packaged crochet products and started doing leaflets with crochet patterns for them, as well. At that time, the only crochet patterns that were published were by yarn companies.
In 1971, Jean realized how much money Boye was making on the leaflets she was doing, so she decided to start her own company! That was the beginning of Leisure Arts, the first needlework pattern publisher that was not associated with a yarn company. Six years later, Jean sold Leisure Arts and started American School of Needlework (ASN), where she also published needlework leaflets. Sometime in 2002, Jean sold ASN to Dynamic Resource Group (DRG), the owners of Annie’s Attic, the Needlecraft Shop and House of White Birches. Jean stayed with DRG for 2 years as editor of Crochet! magazine. Then in 2004, she left DRG and started producing crochet books with her good friend, Rita Weiss, who worked with her for many years at ASN. Over the past 5 decades,Jean Leinhauser published hundreds, if not thousands, of crochet books and leaflets. I have dozens of Jean’s books in my crochet library to this day. Here is a photo of Rita and Jean at a Crochet Guild of America (CGOA) Conference (Jean is on the left and Rita is on the right):
Jean and Rita
I first met Jean in January, 2002, at a craft trade show (HIA) in Anaheim, CA when Jean still owned ASN. Jean was sitting at a table with Rita Weiss and Bobbie Matela. I was in awe of meeting this crochet legend and a little scared, too! I was a new designer and didn’t have many designs published at the time. Jean looked at photos of some designs I had made and to my surprise, she bought a couple of them!
Fast forward 2 1/2 years to the summer of 2004. I was working on a paper quilling book that God had dumped in my lap (without me even having to submit a proposal for the book). Jean and Rita had just started their new book producing company called Creative Partners and were looking for someone to hire as a technical editor for the crochet patterns in their books. I had never done this type of work before and said I had an interest in being a tech editor. To my total shock, Jean remembered meeting me at the trade show over 2 years before! She gave me their tech editing test and I passed the test, to the surprise of all 3 of us!
Jean was always encouraging, kind, loving, understanding and more. She always encouraged new designers. She loved people and took a genuine interest in everyone she met. She was my biggest and best mentor, teaching me the ropes of tech editing and starting my tech editing career. I will always be indebted to her. We had great fun e-mailing each other for quite a few years about editing and the challenges it poses. Whenever I felt like pulling my hair out, Jean would say something in an e-mail that made me laugh, which eased my frustration. She had a funny sense of humor, or as Marcy Smith, the editor of Interweave Crochet magazine called it, “a wicked sense of humor”. She was always interested in what was going on in my life and always had love and encouragement to share with anyone in need. Jean attended all of the CGOA Conferences, along with Rita Weiss. She was my “class angel” at the 2009 conference where I taught 4 classes with only one hand because I had broken my wrist 2 1/2 weeks before! Here is a photo of Jean and me at that conference:
Jean and me
Jean and Rita were 2 of the 3 members of the “Old Broads” club. The other member of the club was Margaret Hubert. All 3 of them wore sparkly rhinestone pins that said “Old Broads Rule” at the CGOA Conferences. It is a little uncertain to the rules of club membership. Some say members in this exclusive club had to be over a certain age or had to be in the publishing business for as long as Rita and Jean. Others say you had to be a knit/crochet designer still working in the industry and you had to have your first book published before 1968! In any case, the 3 of them wore their pins with pride and we all laughed at this exclusive club!
In July of 2011, at the CGOA Conference in Minneapolis, MN, Jean Leinhauser was the first inductee (posthumously) into the new CGOA Hall of Fame. The CGOA Board of Directors voted to rename the Hall of Fame in Jean’s honor. It is now called the Jean Leinhauser CGOA Hall of Fame. This year, Margaret Hubert will be the second inductee into the Hall of Fame. To read about the Hall of Fame, visit the CGOA website here.
Several years ago, Jean and Rita decided to get “glamour” shots for including in some new books by Leisure Arts. Here is Jean’s glamour shot:
Jean’s glamour shot
She was beautiful to me, with or without makeup!
I will never forget Jean. She impacted so many lives and is deeply missed by many people. She was an inspiration to all designers, many of whom were extremely afraid to meet her (according to the stories I’ve read)! But Jean was humble and approachable, even though she was a “legend” in the needlework industry.
She was a huge blessing to me. I thank God for bringing her into my life and for allowing me to be her friend, as she was mine.
Rest in Peace, Jean, knowing that you are loved and missed by thousands of people worldwide.
