Meet Elizabeth Dackson, Director of Events We’d love for you to get to know the MQG Staff! Every few weeks, we’ll highlight one of our eight staff members. We’re quilters too, and we each made a quilt using a pattern from the MQG Resource Library to share with you. Once the quilt is made, we will donate it to a local organization or raise money for a cause through the sale of the quilt. This week, Director of Events Elizabeth Dackson is showing her version of the City Lights quilt by Anne Sullivan. How long have you been quilting? Almost thirteen years now (omg!). I learned through experimentation, library books, and blogs. I jumped into quilting hardcore and spent several years writing patterns and teaching quilting as well before jumping into work at the MQG. Do you have quilty friends/pets? My pets adore quilts. Maximus is a nine-year-old goldendoodle who does not know he’s a dog. In an ideal world, he would have a quilted pillow to snuggle with on top of an actual quilt to lay on at all times. Poppy is a mischievous lab mix who notoriously ate the edge of one of my favorite quilts once and has never lived it down. George Weasley von Pringle, my nine-year-old orange tabby, is a quilt snob and likes to approve or disapprove of any quilt tops during the basting process by either sitting on it (a cat thumbs up) or sitting next to it (a strong cat thumbs down). He’s taken to doing the same if I use my floor as a design wall to share his thoughts about block placement. Do you have a favorite block/technique? Paper piecing is my jam – though we were not immediate besties! There was a lot of tantrumming on my part as I wrapped my brain around how paper piecing worked, but once I got it, I loved it. My second quilting book was all about some of my favorite tips and tricks for foundation paper piecing and it’s still my go-to piecing style. What about non-quilty hobbies? Knitting and cross-stitching are my other fiber hobbies. Cross-stitching was my first actual fiber hobby, something my mom taught me as an eight-year-old who constantly wanted to be crafty. Knitting is something I’ve picked up in adulthood and have found a lot of joy in the repetitive nature of it, not to mention the beautiful hand-dyed yarns and squish factor of soft yarn. Tell us about your pre-MQG life. I worked as a continuing medical education event planner and meeting technology professional at a cancer hospital, so I’ve always been into details. Lists and spreadsheets are my idea of fun in the workplace! I left the hospital when my oldest child was born in 2008, and started teaching quilting about a year after I started quilting, but I still missed the extensive details of event planning. I started at the MQG in 2013, combining my obsession for quilting and my love of event planning, and have been ever since! Did you make any modifications or additions to the quilt pattern? The only change I made really was in my fabric choices; I consciously wanted to take a pattern made in solids and make it in prints to play with my scraps, which are mostly prints. Where are you donating your quilt? A local organization in Greensboro, where I live, that supports people currently facing, experiencing, or coming out of homelessness called the Interactive Resource Center.
