Katalin Lovász (Kati) was born and raised in Hungary, and had a passion for textiles and embroidery since a young age. She learned to sew from her grandmother, who in Communist-era Hungary made many of her family’s clothes, and collected patterns from Burda magazines smuggled in from then-West Germany and passed around among relatives.

Kati attended numerous folk art workshops and camps in Hungary as a teenager, then moved to the United States for college and later graduate school. She wrote her Ph.D. work on women’s representations in film and digital media and how costumes and fashion can be used to protest repressive social norms. After leaving academia, Kati founded a small business designing and producing sewing and embroidery patterns.