Meet our team!
Our teachers and staff are here to help you get started on your next project or adopting a new hobby! Get to know us a bit more below.
Tawnee Kinnebrew
Shop Owner (She/Her)
Tawnee Kinnebrew is the owner and founder of Wyldwood Creative. She opened Wyldwood Creative to share her love of making with the community. She is a maker of all things and has at least 10 WIPs at any time. When she's not at work she loves hanging out with her husband Taylor and their pack of dogs, Zeus, Gus, and Willow. Oh and a fat ass cat named Stella. She loves living in the PNW, a good round of pub trivia, and all things trashy TV. She has a passion for teaching and keeps things light and fun in her classes. Owning Wyldwood is a dream come true and she is so thankful she gets to do what she loves every day.
Kate Wilson
Assistant Manager (she/her)
Kate is a ceaseless creative, and her parents fostered her early love for creative endeavors while working on their home most of her life, adding warmth through woodworking and knitting. She went to college in Chicago to become an Interior Architect. While there she fell in love with design as a whole. She took any class that would allow her to explore additional design options from ceramics, print making and wood working. When the pandemic hit, Kate lost access to the facilities and the projects that she had been working on. In this moment she found a broken sewing machine in her building's donation pile and she was off on her sewing journey. A few years and upgraded sewing machines later, Kate is still in an endless pile of projects. She finds the merger of her design background and sewing to be very satisfying and fulfilling. In her free time Kate can either be found working on a house project, in the hardware store, or on an adventure.
Olivia Alaniz
Social Media & Newsletters (she/her)
Olivia lives in TX with her boyfriend and adorable menagerie of creatures, including two cats - Letty and Nate, and a border collie named Apollo. She is a self-taught quilter who started her journey back in 2018. She has dabbled in bag making and has found joy in the prep work and sense of accomplishment that comes with completing a project. While she's finished over 50 projects, she still admits to the classic crafter's corner of unfinished projects looming in her house. Olivia's next big crafting jump will be into garment making to fulfill her dream of making her own clothes. When she's not making things, you'll find Olivia with a mystery or thriller novel or tending to her indoor plants backed by her own soundtrack.
Leah Traxel
Shop Assistant (she/her)
Leah has been sewing for about ten years and thinks the best part of making is choosing the fabric for new projects. While she can't estimate how many projects she has finished, but it's definitely not as many as she has started! Leah is interested in exploring embroidery as a new making experience. When not creating, she enjoys watching cooking shows and reality TV and reading romance novels. And while Leah started out with the shop as a shop assistant she has transitioned to coordinating our class calendar and the scholarships that accompany it!
Steph Greear
Instructor & Website (she/they)
Steph is a collector of hobbies and hoarder of books. Her best friend convinced her to learn to sew almost a decade ago so they could cosplay together from their favorite videogames, books, podcasts. Since then, she started quilting to emulate the well-loved pieces her grandmother made for the family and making her own garments that fit better and last longer than ones you could buy. Steph aspires to take more formal fashion design courses to learn how to design their own patterns to make accessible clothing options. And if she can ever find the time, she would love to do more historical garment making instead of just reading about it. She lives in Sammamish with her partner and a yard full of gardening mishaps. Since joining the shop as an instructor, Steph has taken over running the website and hopes to keep building on the foundation Remy laid to grow Wyldwood and expand the community!
Instructors
Kael Zayas
Instructor (she/her)
Kael has been interested in sewing since she could hold a needle and thread! She's moved on from using a hotel sewing kit to turn t-shirt scraps into doll dresses, but only in scale: one of her current favorite projects is upcycling old clothing into new creations for her two young children. When not at Wyldwood, you can find Kael serving local families as a doula or talking to her beloved flock of backyard chickens (probably that second one). If she never had to sew another face mask again, she'd be fine.
Areas of interest: garment sewing, Língit moccasins, hand quilting, knitting, saying "I could make that!"*
*50/50 success rate
Would love to learn: Língit button blankets & regalia, the finer points of tailoring
Danielle Jenne
Instructor (she/her)
Danielle has been sewing for about 20 years, with projects ranging from garment making, costume creation, and mending to fitting/alterations and home decor. She finds the most joy in transforming an idea into a tangible item and relishing in the satisfaction of its use. Danielle estimates having completed dozens of projects in the last five years alone. However, her creativity doesn't stop there; she aspires to delve into spinning and weaving. Outside of her sewing room, Danielle enjoys cooking and baking, particularly when she can share the delicious results with others. She also loves board games, puzzles, and yoga. For more adventurous endeavors, she delights in weekend trips, hiking, thrifting, attending concerts, and exploring new restaurants.
Rae Parks
Instructor (she/her)
Rae first learned to sew in high school - her aunt spent a week giving her an intensive sewing crash course and she emerged with her first dresses and shirts (and one hilariously disastrous pair of jeans for the failures-we-learned-from pile). After a long break from sewing, she picked it back up in the early days of the pandemic. Since then it’s been a source of joy and empowerment, a personal protest against the environmental impacts and labor exploitation of fast fashion, and a way to connect with the amazing sewing community. She is thrilled to share her love of sewing with others in the Wyldwood community! Rae is also an enthusiastic hiker and solo backpacker, a moderately successful plant parent, and a lover of sci-fi TV. Her professional background is in education and her ‘day job’ is in operations with a youth-serving Seattle nonprofit.
