Karen Bialik and husband, Gary, started The Fabric Addict in 2006 in Lethbridge AB, Canada. They have grown to a 3700 sq ft store with 4 employees.  Karen has been sewing since her preschool days (50 years!).

Favourite quilt types would be traditional blocks set in an untraditional way. Favourite colour: azure. Favourite fabric: deep saturated colours with metallic highlights. She has been quilting for about 40 years, usually making up her own designs.

After opening the store, Karen would often get frustrated with mistakes found in commercial patterns, and desided to start designing and selling her own patterns. A Designing Monster was born! There is a lot of math and figuring in pattern writing, which Karen also likes. Staff test the new designs (a really nice perk). Gary is the best pattern folder/stuffer. Gary also does many of the diagrams in the patterns which make them very easy to understand.

Karen usually uses EQ7 for designing, but also takes paper, pencil and calculator everywhere. She spends much of her summer in Nova Scotia (where they lived for 17 years), so she's a landlocked prairie girl with sea salt in her blood.