Barbara Brackman is a quilt historian and author from Lawrence, Kansas. She's been fascinated by quilt patterns for forty years and could not rest until she'd indexed more than 4,000 pieced patterns for her "Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns." "BlockBase" is that index for the computer age. She writes several blogs about quilt history and patterns including "Material Culture." She was inducted into the Quilters Hall of Fame of Marion, Indiana, in 2001 and is a founding member of the American Quilt Study Group.