- Urban Zündt –

Urban Zündt is from the peaceful rural setting of Altenrhein, a small town near the centre for embroidery in St. Gallen, Switzerland. In past days St. Gallen embroidery was represented at the entire world's major exhibitions and enjoyed unbounded success. Even today the leading fashion designers of haute-couture repeatedly use St. Gallen embroidery.

Atelier Zündt was founded in Altenrhein by Felix Zündt and is where high class pattern collections for embroidery are created on the basis of longstanding tradition, although with contemporary, modern designs which always reflect the latest trend. Their creators naturally keep their finger on the pulse of current fashion, identifying new trends even before they become public knowledge.

Urban's father Felix Zündt was born in Balgach in the St. Gallen Rhine Valley. After completing his education, he successfully passed his training to become a designer in a leading textile company and continued his training in England. Following his return, he again worked as a designer in the textile sector, in fact spending three years as a lecturer at the Swiss College of Textiles, Clothing and Fashion, the STF, in St. Gallen before setting up in business himself. His work involved on the one side producing his own creations and on the other, taking on orders for designs.

Urban obviously inherited his father's imagination and creative drive. Like his father, he also trained as a designer and digitizer but at the same time studied business administration. At the young age of twenty he joined his father's company, Atelier Zündt and, as expected, brought with him the "fresh new ideas" of a younger generation. For some design collections he draws inspiration from his vast library of historical embroideries and translates them into contemporary designs.

With over 30 years designing and digitizing experience, in the traditional and modern techniques, Urban founded Zündt Design In 2001 and took the highest quality machine embroidery designs to the home embroiderer.

- Tracey Sims –

Tracey Sims is an award-winning artist with over 30 years’ experience. She lives on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia.

Tracey draws her inspiration from nature and during her travels she sketches, makes notes and takes many photographs of the plant life, birds and insects that feature in her work. Back in the studio she uses this pictorial record to design and paint the beautiful art work that is the basis of her digitized embroidery designs as well as fine art paintings and fabric collections. Combining her passion for painting and patchwork, Tracey has created a collection of patchwork prints that are ideal for embellishment with embroidery. These prints are sold individually or in project kits. Her quilts, embroideries and artwork have been featured in many publications in Australia, USA and the UK.

As a respected teacher of art, she has travelled extensively teaching classes throughout Australia, England, Ireland, America, Singapore and New Zealand. Tracey has written seven very successful decorative painting books and many articles and projects for painting magazines in Australia and the United States. She is honoured to be one of only three Australian artists to be commissioned to paint a project for the Decorative Arts Collection Museum in Atlanta Georgia, USA.

Since her introduction to Urban Zündt in 2009, and digitized embroidery, Tracey's life has undergone an exciting and fulfilling deviation with the pair planning many more projects in the future.