Ashley Nickels is a quilter, writer, and teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area. She grew up surrounded by quilters—making her first nine-patch at age eight—and was designing handbags by high school. Ashley spent the first twelve years of her career as a classroom teacher in Spain and San Francisco, designing dynamic learning experiences for both teachers and students. In 2013, she took the leap and started her own creative business, and since then she has designed a unique patent-pending Pop-open bag, taught quilting classes all over the country, and written articles for a variety of publications. These days you can find Ashley teaching both in-person and online quilting and sewing classes to all ages, writing vignettes about her life and her journey, and constantly looking to connect the creative dots.. You can learn more about Ashley and her work at www.ashleynickels.co.