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Lisa J. Taylor is a long-arm machine quilter, originally from the Philadelphia area. She moved to Waldport several years ago and started her business, Quilter in the Glen. Taylor, who has a reputation as an amazing quilter among her peers—both hand quilters and machine quilters—keeps extremely busy making the tops from local quilters into finished quilts and wall hangings. She started out sewing by hand, and as a girl, stitched clothes for her dolls. Later on, she took a home economics class which was required in seventh grade, and which she found a bit frustrating. But her interest in sewing for herself increased as she grew older, and she started making clothes for herself (by hand) in high school. Her high school graduation present was a sewing machine. Once she had that machine, Taylor made much of her own clothing and also became interested in hand embroidery and crewel work after she’d graduated. Some of her embroidery was exhibited in the Brooklyn Public Library in 1976 as part of a display of crafts that were popular in 1776. A stint in Ireland, where she taught needle arts to underprivileged women, also meant that she had to learn to use a knitting machine. When she shopped for teaching supplies, she discovered templates for quilt pieces, so she added quilting to the activities that she taught and started making baby quilts for friends; her first large quilt was the grandmother’s flower garden with hexagons, which she machine-pieced and hand-quilted, using a large oval hoop on a floor stand meant for embroidery. In 1987, Taylor made her first full-size quilt for her daughter. She found a McCall’s paper doll quilt pattern and not knowing what she was doing, she used a thrift store wool blanket for the filling and appliquéd all the parts of the doll—handbag, shoes, etc.—on her sewing machine; she used the sewing machine for the straight lines and hand quilted anything curvy, such as the hearts. She still has that first quilt, which involved using an embroidery hoop to quilt one section at a time. Following the suggestion of a quilting magazine, she made her second quilt using coloring book drawings for patterns; her son wanted sharks, so she “cut out a bunch of sharks and appliqued them around the border and hand-quilted whole thing.” Taylor found her first quilting community by following the bumper sticker on a neighbor’s car, which read “I brake for quilt shops.” As she explains, one day, she rang the doorbell, her neighbor invited her in and showed Taylor the quilts she’d made and then introduced Taylor to her first quilt guild. She and her family were living in San Diego at the time, and she started going to regular meetings at the Sunshine Quilt Guild in El Cajon. She attended her first quilt show in San Diego, thanks to that neighbor, and learned a lot at the guild meetings. By 1993, Taylor had bought her first quilting machine, an early long-arm, which her husband talked her into buying. The next thing she knew, she was going to machine quilters conventions and taking workshops from well-known professionals, such as Linda V. Taylor and Cathy Franks. She did this for over eight years, joined several quilt guilds, and became a professional machine quilter in San Diego. When she and her husband and two children moved to Waldport, Oregon in 2002, she bought a new machine from Boersma’s in McMinnville since it was easier to buy a new one than move what she had. In 2006, Taylor and her husband moved to Donegal, Ireland where she taught workshops in hand appliqué and machine quilting, as well as specific quilt patterns such as double wedding ring and watercolor quilts. In 2008 they returned to Oregon, and she restarted Quilter in the Glen. Lisa Taylor, who has won numerous ribbons for her quilts, has been machine quilting for 30 years; her creations have been featured in several books including Jan Krentz’s Lone Star Quilts and Beyond, and Quick Star Quilts and Beyond. Now on her sixth machine, she loves quilting for folks. People come into her studio for tea and a scone, and they become friends. What Taylor enjoys most about quilting are the social visits, when her clients come in to pick up or drop off their projects. She very much likes to explain techniques and to help those who don’t know the next step. During the pandemic, Taylor found herself busier than ever with so many doing home sewing and bringing her quilt tops. In sum, Lisa Taylor loves to quilt and says that quilting is the first thing she does every day, even before her morning coffee.