I retired from my career as an educational leader – including ten years as a district superintendent – in 2020. Good timing!

 

Giving up my day job of 30 years provided the time I needed to indulge my lifelong interest in design and fashion. Having always loved beautiful garments, I learned how to sew properly and became knowledgeable about textiles. I often listened to podcasts while sewing, in particular one called Dressed: A History of Fashion.

 

Dressed introduced me to Dorothy Wright Liebes.

 

Liebes was an influential weaver and textile designer who dominated the interiors landscape in the first half of the 20th century in San Francisco, Chicago, Hawaii, New York, and Hollywood. She was a native northern Californian, born in Guerneville and raised in Santa Rosa.

Liebes’s Sonoma County roots and early employment as a teacher resonated with me, and I now find myself two years into researching and writing Useful and Beautiful: The Life of Dorothy Wright Liebes.​

 

While research and writing have cut into the free time of retirement, I still sew most of my own clothes, as well as gifts for friends and family. My fabric choices these days tend to favor Liebes’s color palettes and weaves more often than not.

 

I live in Sebastopol, California, with my husband of 38 years and our rescued cattle dog Roxy. Our daughter lives with her husband near Sacramento and our son now calls New York home.