Lana Russel
Lana learned to sew at age eleven at her local sewing store. While garment sewing was her foundation, once she discovered quilting in 2001, while taking a year’s sabbatical from her career as a sixth grade teacher, she found her zeal. Her creativity using textiles continued and she began teaching quilting classes at local quilt shops. Before she knew it, she had a hefty stack of quilt tops awaiting the finishing touch of quilting. She didn’t want someone else to complete her projects, so she set about learning all types of quilt as you go and free motion quilting methods using a domestic machine.
She retired from teaching in the public schools in 2014 and soon after discovered exactly what she had been looking for: the HQ Simply Sixteen® on the HQ Little Foot® frame. It was a smaller, more affordable, movable longarm machine with a small footprint. She fell in love with its ease of operation, and learned to free motion quilt and do ruler work and pantographs while making a dent in her UFO stack. It didn’t take too long before her curiosity about Pro-Stitcher led her to upgrade to the HQ Forte® with Pro-Stitcher, Pro-Stitcher Designer and Catalog, and has enjoyed learning to use them to their fullest potential.
Lana’s lifelong love of learning and teaching is now expressed by educating and training other quilters. She truly has a passion for sharing her knowledge so that others can share in the joy of quilting.