Jennifer Ackerman-Haywood | The Grand Rapids PressGood with fibers: Grand Rapids Fiber Artist Beth Ann Williams poses with some of her work, including quilts, dolls and fabric books. She teaches craft classes at Lakeshore Sewing, where she is creative director.
In West Michigan and beyond, Beth Ann Williams is known among fiber artists for her gift of being able to teach her students the skills they need to express themselves creatively with fabric and thread.
If you think you’re “not creative” or “can’t do it,” she’ll correct you and tell you what you really lack is confidence — and then she’ll help you work on that, too.
Williams has built a career on overcoming obstacles, which makes her work all the more remarkable.
Like many children with artistic relatives, Williams always was making things as a child. Her sketch books ranked among her most prized possessions while growing up in a series of far-off places while her parents worked as missionaries.
“When we were evacuated out of Africa, I had one change of clothes and my sketch books,” said Williams, who was born in New Jersey moved 20 times by age 20.
Williams studied communication arts in college, along with psychology and science. The plan was to return to Africa with her husband, John, to work as a linguist. But, after a series of miscarriages and nearly dying during the birth of her oldest daughter, Caryl, now 20, it became clear living in a place with limited medical care was not an option.
Williams, now 44, was diagnosed with neurological and heart problems as a teenager and then a variation of multiple sclerosis after her health problems got more severe during her 20s.
After the birth of her second daughter, Connor, now 18, she lost mobility and the ability to speak. Her prognosis was uncertain.
“It was a complete loss of identity,” she said.
The linguist who studied multiple languages was struggling to communicate in basic English.
A fourth-generation quilter who learned the basics from her grandmother during the 1970s, Williams turned to quilting as a way to communicate and leave a legacy for her children as she struggled to regain language skills and mobility.
Working with the encouragement of an artistic family friend and mentor named Thelma Baldwin, Williams developed machine quilting techniques that allowed her to create beautifully pieced and appliqued quilts that she was not able to stitch by hand.
Books by Beth Ann Williams; Published by Martingale & Co.
With compromised health, quilting was challenging, but healing at the same time.
Three years later, Williams was showing her work and teaching classes. Before long she published three quilting books and joined the national teaching circuit. She has since contributed to several more books.
“In my life it’s been a consistent pattern of things that looked really horrible at the time that lead to really wonderful things,” she said.
The woman who once worried about her legacy has bloomed into a nationally known artist and created dozens of intricate and breathtaking quilts despite physical challenges that sometimes force her to stay home and rest.
Williams has lived with severe chronic pain for more than 30 years, but you wouldn’t know it when you see the cheerful way she goes about life.
Most days, Williams gets around with the aid of a cane. On bad days, she’ll put on bright red shoes that match her bright red wheelchair and get on with her day.
“If you have to have (a wheelchair) it might as well be a fashion accessory,” she said.
Williams traveled the nation extensively, teaching quilting workshops until 2006 when she found herself on the verge of a seizure in an airport terminal. Her vision was fuzzy and she was slurring her words. She was alone and struggling to find her gate.
She credits “a lot of grace” with getting her home safely and decided to stop traveling alone after that.
When Brian Collins, owner of the local Lakeshore Sewing stores, heard that Williams was no longer on the national teaching circuit, he offered her a full-time job as creative director. The job is flexible enough for her to work from her Grand Rapids home on days when she needs to.
When making large quilts started to get too challenging, Williams started making smaller art quilts, fabric books and art dolls. No matter what she always finds a way to continue making art.
Contact Williams at bethann@lakeshore-sewing.com or call 531-5561 to sign up for her classes and free demos at Lakeshore Sewing.