Tracey Russell began her quilting journey in 2002 after her 3rd child, a daughter, was born and was hooked from the beginning. The first quilt was a small one for her little girls’ baby doll. From that little quilt, it was full steam ahead into full sized bed quilts for the children and she’s been going strong ever since.
In 2006, she began her longarm quilting career and is completely self taught. From the beginning , she would find herself piecing quilt tops specifically with the quilting in mind. The goal always being to supply a canvas with which to create all the quilty texture with fun fanciful doodles.
Her passions are freehand quilting and teaching quilters, helping them to ‘flatten that learning curve’.
Tracey opened her shop in December of 2015 and is the proud owner/operator of Whirls n Swirls Quilting-APQS Ontario.
Located just east of Toronto, in Oshawa, Ontario Canada.
Her love of all things longarm is evident on Traceys’ YouTube channel (Whirls n Swirls Quilting). Her popular 4 part series “100 designs in 100 days” provides quilters with 400 freehand quilting designs and a plethora of videos teaching, not just free motion quilting designs, but practical day to day ‘how to’ videos using a longarm machine. With over 500 videos on her channel, quilters are sure to find both education and inspiration to help along on that longarm journey.
Tracey is very excited to be on this new path of artistic growth. Her fabric designs are meant to provide quilters with inspiration and creative canvases on which to play, learn, grow and master their skills while dancing across the fabric with their machines.
Her motto is: Always take the Time to Doodle!