Karen Foster is a social maker. The mother of two and grandmother of an imaginative 5-year-old joined Flickr at the height of its creative boom. Foster recalls swaps and quilt-alongs on the social platform as the turning point of her social media presence, and her start with a transformative quilting community. “When I was ten, it was a neighbor who taught me how to sew,” says Foster. “Art was always my favorite subject in school, especially drawing, painting, and printmaking.” When Foster started quilting later in life, she learned the skills of the craft through adult education classes in Capitola, California, where she lives now. “I wasn’t all that excited about following directions and making something already envisioned by someone else,” Foster says. “I only got hooked once I started modifying patterns and making up my own.”
