After serving 30 years in the Canadian Forces as a Military Engineer, Dawn retired in 2005 to devote time to her true passion, textile engineering, a.k.a. quilting, and her second career as a quilt and textile-arts appraiser.  Dawn now resides in Canmore AB.  The only American Quilters’ Society certified quilt appraiser in western Canada, Dawn is also an accredited member of the Association of Online Appraisers and has completed the 15-hr National USPAP course.  Recently, Dawn has been asked to judge at local and regional quilt shows in Western Canada.  

Initially a traditional quilter, she started her first quilt, a friendship quilt, when only 17, appraising has opened the door to a vast array of quilt and textile related pursuits.  From teaching beginning appliqué to studying the quilts and fabrics from the 1700s to the studio art quilts of today, curating a quilt exhibit at the Nepean Museum, managing 11 special exhibits of more than 500 quilts at Quilt Canada 2010, and co-founding the Southern Alberta Quilt Study Group, Dawn still finds time to work on her own quilt art.  Dawn’s quilts have won awards at the Calgary Stampede and Exhibition, Vermont Quilt Festival, International Ploughing Match and at local guild shows.  Her quilts have been exhibited internationally and are in private collections in Canada and the United States.

To have a better understanding of the techniques and design principles employed by today’s quilt artists, Dawn has taken advantage of classes by internationally acclaimed quilt artists and teachers offered at Canmore’s Quilt Art Rockies and other Calgary area shops.  As a direct result of these classes Dawn has had her work published in Elly Sienkiewicz’s Beloved Baltimore Album Quilts and Elly Sienkiewicz Teaches You Beginning Baltimore Appliqué and Gloria Loughman’s quilted symphony, all by C&T Publishing.   Dawn  also has a block featured in Elly Sienkiewicz’s newest book Spoken Without a Word - 30th Anniversary Revised Edition: A Lexicon of Selected Symbols with 24 Patterns from Classic Baltimore Album Quilts, by Turtle Hill Press.

 Dawn belongs to many international, national and local quilt organizations including the American Quilt Study Group (where she serves as the Canadian Area representative), Studio Art Quilt Associates, and the American Quilter’s Society. Dawn is a founding member of the Alberta Quilt Study Society and its first President.