NSCAD University
Swim was born in Lockeport, Nova Scotia, Canada and grew up in Nova Scotia. She studied painting at Mount Allison University and NSCAD University (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design) where she graduated 1972, before apprenticing with Danish designers Lisbeth Have and Annette Juel. She returned to Nova Scotia in 1975 but moved to Toronto, Ontario, in 1978, making art quilts for corporate and private collections. In 2004 she established The Art Quilt Gallery of the Atlantic, in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.