Biography

Sherri Lynn Wood is North America's leading improv quilting author, artist and improvisational quilting expert. She facilitates modern improv quilting workshops as a creative life practice for beginning quilters and more experienced modern quilters. She teaches online quilting classes, modern quilt guild classes, and speaks at international conferences.

Ever since she unwittingly defied the sexist dress code at Wiley Junior High School with a modest sundress of her creation, she experienced sewing as a source of creative expression, subversive resistance, and personal empowerment.

Exposure to the liberated abstract quilts of black makers such as Rosie Lee Tompkins and Arbie Williams in the early 1990’s, ignited her passion for improvisational quilting and initiated her trajectory as a community based artist focused on restorative social practice.

Sherri Lynn is the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, two MacDowel Fellowships, and numerous artist residencies, including Recology San Francisco, where she undertook the task of presenting a body of work made entirely from materials scavenged from the city dump.

She holds a Master's in Fine Arts in sculpture from Bard College and a degree in Theological Studies from Emory University. She has 30 years of experience as an improv quilting artist and improvisational quilting expert. Her best-selling improv quilting book, The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters: A Guide to Creating, Quilting & Living Courageously (Abrams, 2015), provides scores, or frameworks, for flexible patterns and creative exploration, along with practical instruction in stitching techniques and intuitive color.