Julia Graves started her quilting business, Special Occasion Quilts LLC, in 2007 and teaches, lectures, designs patterns, makes commission quilts, longarms for others and sells & services APQS longarm machines. She won Best Longarm Machine Workmanship Wall Quilt Category at the 2016 Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival, has had quilts published in books by Gloria Loughman, Katie Pasquini-Masupust and MJ Kinman, was an Artist in Residence at Empty Spools in 2019, and taught at Empty Spools Seminars and Hudson River Valley Art Workshops.
Julia has been sewing since she was ten and always loved fabric, needle arts and the entire creative process. She did her apprenticeship as a quilter by making a quilt for each of her nieces and nephews (and thinks she should have counted them before making this promise – there were 32!). She has since made more quilts than she can count, many for charity, and is partial to scrap quilts and working with color to achieve amazing results. Visit her gallery on her website at http://www.soquilts.com. You can also find her on Instagram at #juliagraves82, or Facebook at soquilts. Julia lives in Leesburg Virginia.