Hi, I’m Lori!
Illustrator, quilt pattern designer, and lifelong maker behind She Makes Joy.
I design modern quilt patterns and cheerful illustrated goods that celebrate creativity, color, and the satisfaction of making something beautiful with your own hands. My patterns are written to actually teach you — not assume you already know.
My love of making things didn’t start in a craft room. It started in a construction site and a sewing room.
Where My Love of Making Started
When I was six years old, my dad began building our family home with his own two hands. We moved in before it was finished — the basement was livable, but the rest of the house was still framing and possibility. For years, my parents, my brother, and I shared that basement space while the house slowly took shape above us. I was eleven before I moved upstairs into my own bedroom.
Growing up inside an ongoing construction project meant I was surrounded by tools, problems to solve, and the process of figuring things out. My dad invited me to help. I learned early that if you’re willing to try, make mistakes, and keep going, you can build almost anything. That belief has never left me.
At the same time — often on the same afternoons — I was in my grandma’s sewing room.
She often acted as our babysitter in the evenings, and some of my earliest memories are of watching fabric transform at her sewing machine. She outfitted our whole family — cousins, brother, me — in something handmade for every holiday and birthday. Before I was twelve, I’d probably never owned a store-bought dress. When she eventually sat me down and taught me to sew at ten years old, it felt less like learning a new skill and more like being let in on something she’d been quietly showing me all along.
Between my dad building our house and my grandma creating at her sewing table, making things with your hands felt completely normal. Expected, even. That foundation is everything.
How I Found Quilting (And What it Taught Me)
I’ve been sewing most of my life, but quilting came later — and honestly, it humbled me.
My first quilts were ones I made for my daughters when they were little. I didn’t know anything about quilting as a craft. I just sewed pieces of fabric together in ways I found beautiful, completely unconcerned with rules or technique. Those quilts aren’t perfect, but I’m proud of them.
About fifteen years later, when I decided I wanted to design quilt patterns, I figured I should probably learn from someone else’s first. That’s when I discovered quilting is an entirely different world from apparel sewing — different seam allowances, different construction logic, different everything.
But the biggest lesson came from a scrappy quilt pattern I was sewing to study.
The instructions walked me through piecing the units and assembling the blocks. But when I laid everything out, something was clearly wrong. The fabrics were completely unbalanced — visually chaotic despite a nice color palette. The pattern had never once told me to think about color distribution. It just assumed I knew.
That moment stuck. Not because I was frustrated with myself — I was frustrated with the pattern. It had left out something essential and never acknowledged it. I vowed then that my patterns would never do that.
My Pattern Philosophy
There are two things I’ve noticed about most quilt patterns, and they both drive me a little bit crazy.
The first is that patterns often assume knowledge the maker simply doesn’t have yet — especially when it comes to new techniques. So when I design a pattern with a technique I haven’t taught before, I test multiple methods until I find the one that is the clearest to follow and produces the best results. Then I break it down step by step, with illustrations, so you can actually learn it — not just survive it.
The second is that most patterns are written as if you’ll cut perfectly and sew perfectly every single time. But most of us aren’t perfect, and we shouldn’t have to be. I intentionally build wiggle room into my construction methods — slightly larger pieces that get trimmed to size after sewing — so you can achieve accuracy through the process rather than needing to start with it.
Put simply: my patterns are designed for real quilters, not theoretical ones.
My goal is to help you create something beautiful while actually growing your skills. And if at the end you get to say “I made that” — that’s the whole point.
Life Outside the Studio
When I’m not working on She Makes Joy, you can find me with my husband at our farm in Defeated Creek, Tennessee — tromping through the woods, wrenching on our vintage Avion camper, kayaking, eating tacos, or checking another National Park off the list.
A Few Things You Probably Don’t Know
I'm completely indecisive. (Ironic, for a designer.)
I always take the stairs two at a time.
I make the best guacamole. This is not up for debate.
I love puzzles — but only Charles Wysocki's art.
I own about 100 and keep a list on my phone so I don't buy a duplicate. (Again.)
My birthday has fallen on Easter exactly three times. The next one's scheduled for when I'm 91.
I've marked my calendar.
Still here? Come find me on Instagram — I’ve met some genuinely wonderful people there — or join my email list below. I’d love to have you along for whatever gets made next.
