Cheryl Fall has been designing needlecraft patterns professionally since 1986 and is the author of fourteen books, including Embroidery Basics, Simply Samplers, and three titles in the popular Dummies series. She has written more than 2,000 articles on how-to crafts and maintains her own Needleknowledge.com website. Fall was also the host of the nationally distributed PBS Plus series The Creative Life. She lives near Portland, Oregon.