Sheila Stewart has been hooking rugs since 2002. She is originally from the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia and remembers her grandmother hooking rugs. She discovered this wonderful art form on a trip to Nova Scotia in 2002. Believing there were no rug hookers in British Columbia, she taught herself how to hook and then began attending rug schools in Nova Scotia and Oregon, USA. She became a certified instructor in Traditional Rug Hooking through the McGown Teacher's Program in the United States. She was a Registered Nurse and worked for many years in Critical Care and then Private Practice. After retiring as a Rehabilitation Consultant in 2009, she opened the Blue Heron Rug Hooking Studio in Victoria where she teaches classes and organizes workshops for the rug hooking community. She enjoys all styles of rug hooking but has a particular interest in using spot-dyed fabrics to hook rugs adapted from the works of Emily Carr, the Group of Seven, and Marion Rose.