Holice Turnbow is a Quilt Judge and Teacher certified by the National Quilting Association. His quilting career began in the early 70’s when he was asked to teach needlework and quilting for a county recreational program. National exposure followed in 1978 when he served as a consultant to the West Virginia Department of Culture and History to organize a quilt show in conjunction with the U.S. Postal Service’s issuance of a commemorative stamp recognizing quilting as a folk art. He also served on the planning committee for the First Continental Quilting Congress held in Arlington, Virginia in 1978. These two events resulted in invitations to lecture and teach at quilting events across the United States and in Canada.
Holice Turnbow lectures and conducts workshops in many quilting techniques with emphasis on those subjects related to the development and use of quilting designs. This is an outgrowth of his work with The Stencil Company, for which he designs quilting stencils, and with two companies for which I have designed whole cloth quilts. His experience in whole cloth designs began in 1992 when he was asked by Spartex, Inc, a South Carolina fabric company, to develop and design whole cloth patterns that could be preprinted onto fabric. Significant in these designs was a series based on quilts in the collection of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C. More recently, he has provided a series of designs for Benartex, Inc.
Holice teaching a class at The Charlton Sewing Center
He has written for various quilting magazines and appeared on public television. with Kay Wood’s “Strip Quilting with Kaye” and “Quilting for the 90’s.” He also appeared on 13 segments of “Heirlooms by Design” which was shown in the Alabama area through the CBS cable networks. He has also filmed six shows on QNN representing The Stencil Co.
He is the former co-curator of the “Hoffman Challenge” with Betty Boyink, and has served as a quilt consultant to a number of companies, notable among these are Stencil House (a Canadian company producing quilting stencils), Talon, Inc. (a producer of threads) and Benartex, Inc. (a New York fabric company).
Holice has also designed and made garments for two invitational exhibits and has designed and made quilted items for various other special exhibits and quilt challenges including the exhibit “Men of Biblical Proportions.”