debra m. lee

Debra is a retired business systems designer and director who turned her stress management hobby of knitting into a second career as a fiber artist.

Her knitwear designs have been published in hand-knitting magazines and books and her self-published hand-knitting patterns are available on ravelry.com under debraknits-va and lovecrafts.com.

As a nationally certified Craft Yarn Council Association teacher, she taught knitting technique and design workshops and classes to beginner and advanced students for more than 12 years at conferences, corporate venues and retail yarn shops. 

Beyond teaching and textile making, she has contributed to building the community of textile makers. She was a founder and organizer of Knit-Out & Crochet Too!, a free annual event on the National Mall, Washington, D.C., that ran from 2001 to 2005. She has also participated in The Textile Museum's Celebration of Textiles festival from 2002 to 2005 and later contributed to the Museum's interactive educational gallery called, Textiles 101.

Today, the intention of Debra's work is to create artforms that educate and inform while evoking emotion and/or movement, i.e., eye travel, through line, shape and color. Recognizing that one's heritage and identity are shaped by one's environment, Debra aspires to depict events that have influenced the cultural norms of her and perhaps others' identity as Asian American.