Anna Maria Horner is an artist, author, and fabric designer, known for her colorful fabric designs, quilts, and sewing patterns. In addition to teaching classes and selling items globally under her namesake brand, she has written several books about sewing, quilting, and needlework. She has appeared on The Martha Stewart Show and been featured in Better Homes and Gardens. 

She grew up in a house full of her dad’s paintings and with a closet full of her mom’s handiwork.  Beds were warmed by the hand-loomed wool blankets sent by her grandmother from Greece. The busy little bodies of her and her siblings were warmed by the beautiful hand-knits of their grandmother in Indiana. As a kid in the 70’s, she passed store-bought Barbie dresses and instead created her own from her mother’s fabric scraps. A simple start to a diverse path.

In 1995, after graduating with an Honors Fine Arts Degree in Drawing from the University of Tennessee, Anna Maria opened Handmaiden, a clothing, and housewares boutique. This retail space served as the home base for Anna Maria’s clothing line which she designed and produced, together with her mom. Eventually, the label was offered to the wholesale market, where it sold at several stores across the country.   In the midst of clothing design and production, she stayed active artistically by exhibiting in galleries regularly and her paintings, both small and large scale, are a part of hundreds of private and commercial collections.

There have been varied stops on her path to here, but a common element in all of her work, whether fashion, quilting or fine art, is a passion for the language of color.  Somewhere around 2001, her fascination with taking an idea through all the necessary steps from her sketchbook to a store shelf sparked the momentum to create a brand.  Anna Maria's fresh perspectives within traditional markets and her vision of being surrounded by the work of her own hands has led her to partnering with more than two dozen manufacturers to design homewares, gift items, and textiles. 

Anna Maria is the mother of seven (8 to 30) and all her creative endeavors have been sparked in the presence of her family. As one bird after another flies out of the nest, she and the younger sort recently moved from their long-time home (and home studio) in Nashville down the road to charming Historic Franklin.