Cassandra was born in Santa Barbara, California in 1985, and has been creating art since she was old enough to pick up a crayon and put it to paper. She started her self-taught embroidery journey in January 2020 with a bag of vintage DMC thread and quickly became passionate about the mindful work of creating her landscape hoops, developing her style over the following months during the pandemic lockdown. Her work has since been reviewed on Colossal, My Modern Met, and School of Stitched Textiles. She has been featured in print in Love Embroidery Magazine, The Montecito Journal, and Studio Visit Book, Vol. 3 by Arts To Hearts Project. She also taught an online workshop for members of The Stitch Club on TextileArtist.org and presented live with Creative Spark Online Learning. Her work was selected to be included in the group exhibition, Open Call: All Media 2025, at Studio Channel Islands in Camarillo, California. And, most recently, she wrote her first book, Richly Stitched Landscape Embroidery: Mastering Thread Painted Scenes, scheduled to be released on April 28, 2026.

Cassandra lives and works in Camarillo, California, where she continues to produce original art pieces, and shares her love of hand embroidery on her social pages.

School of Stitched Textiles https://www.sofst.org/

Cassandra's Links:

- Website: https://www.cassandramdias.com

- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cassiemdias

- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@cassiemdias

- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cassiemdias

- Pre-Order Richly Stitched Landscape Embroidery:

Kandy G Lopez was born in 1985 in New Jersey, USA and is a multidisciplinary artist exploring cultural identity, representation, and power through fiber art, portraiture, painting, and mixed media. Born to Dominican parents, she draws from her experience navigating multiple cultural landscapes.

Lopez holds a BFA in Painting and a BS in Marketing/Management from the University of South Florida and earned her MFA in Painting from Florida Atlantic University in 2014. Her background in both fine arts and business informs her meticulous material investigations and strategic engagement with art institutions. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Media, and Arts at Nova Southeastern University, where she integrates critical theory with hands-on material practice.

Website: kandyglopez.com

Instagram: @kandyglopez

School of Stitched Textiles

Carolyn Forster is a quilt designer, teacher and author from Tunbridge Wells in Kent. Since self-publishing her first book, “Quilting On the Go” in 2007 Carolyn has gone on to write many more patchwork and quilting books with Search Press in the UK and Landauer Publishing in the USA.

She has been a regular project contributor for magazines in the UK, including Todays Quilter, as well as abroad.

Carolyn's quilts are an eclectic mix of fabrics, a posh way to say she makes scrappy quilts, and they always have their roots from some point in the past, being inspired by quilt makers who have gone before us. Accessibility is Carolyn’s key philosophy with her teaching, demystifying techniques to allow every quilter to discover their own voice.

Carolyn combines her passion for travel and teaching, having been a regular teacher at Quilt Festival Houston, as well as for The American Quilters Society. She continues teaching in the UK exploring new areas and meeting new quilters both at home and abroad and is a textiles tutor for the craft holiday company Stitchtopia.

Carolyn's website is https://www.carolynforster.co.uk/

Instagram is @quiltingonthego

School of Stitched Textiles www.sofst.org