Nancy L. Orcutt

Nancy L. Orcutt

Nancy L. Orcutt is a self-taught, Vermont quilter who has been active in private quilt groups, local quilt guilds, and state-wide quilting events for many years. She believes that loving what you do makes a great quilt maker. Nancy grew up with a love of fabric that has expanded to making quilts for her family, quilts for charity, and exchanging blocks and fabrics with other quilters around the world. Nancy believes that quilts have been an important part of American life for many groups and that quilting has and should evolve over time with available technology.

VT05819-031

Nancy L. Orcutt

Nola Forbes

Moda Fabrics

Saint Albans, Vermont

Nola Forbes

Nola Forbes (NF): My name is Nola A. Forbes and today's date is August 13, 2010 at 2:00 PM. I am conducting an interview with Nancy L. Orcutt at her home in Saint Albans, Vermont for the Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories project. We are doing this through the American Heritage Committee of the Vermont State Society Daughters of the American Revolution. Nancy is a quilter. Tell me about the quilt we photographed today.

Nancy L. Orcutt (NO): That was my very first quilt. We were building a new home. We had done off-white walls. It was going to be close to Christmas so I wanted something to hang on the new walls in the new house. I found a pattern that I really liked. I think it was in a Country Woman's magazine. Not ever having quilted before, I did not realize you needed to add seam allowance to all of the templates that they gave you. I cut them out exactly. My quilt is zigzagged together. It was the only way I could do it without making it much smaller. I needed the size.

NF: This was your very first quilt?

NO: It was my very first quilt. I had attended the Vermont Quilt Festival the summer before, with my Home Dem group. I was quite impressed. I've always indulged in all kinds of crafts. When I started quilting, most of the others fell by the wayside.

NF: What year was that?

NO: That was in the late fall of 1987.

NF: What special meaning does this quilt have for you?

NO: Other than the fact that it was my first quilt. It's what launched me into this vocation. It was something that I could contribute to my new house. It was also something that could keep me busy during the day when I was alone, while my husband worked.

NF: What do you think someone viewing this quilt might conclude about you?

NO: I'm not a very fast learner. I did learn after that you had to add seam allowance. Or at least to read the instructions to find out whether you needed to add the seam allowance or not.

NF: How do you use this quilt now?

NO: I put it up usually at Christmas time for the holidays.

NF: What are your plans for this quilt?

NO: I'll continue to hang it. I have three children. I don't know if they'll fight after I'm gone over it. Or rotate it. One will have it one year, one will have it the next. Or if they'll sell it for a quarter at their garage sale.

NF: Who knows?

NO: You never know, what with kids. Of course you hear all kinds of horror stories about it. I think it's Mary Ellen Hopkins that says use the good fabric first because once you are dead and gone, your kids will sell it all for a quarter a yard at the garage sale.

NF: I might have heard Doreen [Speckmann.] mention that, too.

NO: I don't remember who it was. I know once someone has said something like that, which is so true, it gets into the quilt world and many people use it. You kind of lose track of who originated it.

NF: Would you tell me some more about your interest in quiltmaking. Like what age you were when you started?

NO: Let's see. I must have been in my late thirties.

NF: From whom did you learn to quilt? Some of it was self-taught?

NO: Most of it was self-taught at the beginning. As soon as I found out that I enjoyed it, well enough to spend money on it, I signed up for some beginner classes. Started going to the Vermont Quilt Festival and other places where you could sign up for classes that were your interest. Not just the beginner classes. They offered beginner classes and you gradually got to the intermediate classes.

NF: Are there some particular teachers that you had that you really enjoyed?

NO: Doreen Speckmann was definitely one. She was a hoot. There is never going to be another one like Doreen. Mary Ellen Hopkins is another unique quilter. I've never found a quilter that I did not like, whether they were a professional or not, I always took a personal liking to them.

NF: What is your first quilt memory?

NO: Probably going to the Festival on the bus. No one in my family quilted before me so I don't remember. I spent a lot of time with my aunt and uncle on their farm, and we slept upstairs in the beds. I can remember feather beds but I can't remember ever having quilts on the beds. I don't know if I have just forgotten it or it didn't impress upon me or there may not have been any.

NF: Do you have quiltmakers among your friends?

NO: Oh, yes. Many friends.

NF: Are there any special ones you'd like to talk about? Or some that are no longer with us?

NO: We had formed what we call a Stitch and Bitch group. We meet once a month. There are six of us. We have lost one or two members to moving away, and we have found others that we thought were compatible to take their place. So we have stayed at six because it divides nicely when we meet in each other's homes. We've been together now for over fifteen years. We still do this and still enjoy each other's company and learn from each other.

NF: About how many hours a week do you spend quilting?

NO: As many as I can. [both laugh.] I usually get up before my husband in the morning. I head to my quilting room and work until he gets up. He knows where to find me. He comes down and says good morning and then depending on what I have scheduled for the day I either go up then. Or I stay in my pajamas, sometimes as late as noon. I don't want to stop and go upstairs to take a shower and get dressed. I know I could get distracted with other things and not get back down here.

NF: How has your quiltmaking impacted your family?

NO: The kids learned very quickly that there were things that they hadn't better touch in Mom's room because they were dangerous. They never learned the hard way. They were all good kids and they appreciated the things that I would make for them. I had done clothing right from the get-go. The kids were all older and had all graduated from high school when I got into quilting. I guess maybe I was in my forties, not in my thirties.

NF: Were some of your early quilts made with fabric cutaways from making the clothes in the family?

NO: No. I had been fortunate enough to always have a budget that I could go out and buy what I wanted to use. I may have used some things. But I've never done a Sunbonnet Sue, which is a typical quilt for using little girls' dresses, although I had two little girls and I made a lot of their clothes. I made everything including snowsuits.

NF: Would you tell me if you have ever used quilts to get through a difficult time?

NO: Not really. I just quilt pretty much every day. Whether it's a good day or a bad day. I've been fortunate in the fact that my mother was ninety-one. Although I mourn her passing, I realize that it was a natural progression. I still have my husband and nothing has ever happened to our children. I haven't had some of the tragic things in my family that others have had that they've needed to work through with their quilting.

NF: Could you tell about an amusing experience that has occurred through your quiltmaking?

NO: There's probably too many to try to pick one. Just doing the first quilt and learning how wrong I had set out about it was amusing enough. I used to teach quilting until I found out that I didn't have time to do my own stuff, if I was trying to stay ahead [coughs.] of my class.

NF: Where did you teach those classes?

NO: Mostly at JoAnn Fabrics here in St. Albans.

NF: What do you find pleasing about quiltmaking?

NO: I don't know. I love fabric. When I was a little girl, we would go into what was like department stores back then. Most kids will take off and you'll find them in the toy department. My aunt and my mother both said when I came up missing they would find me in the fabric department just feeling of the fabric. I guess the tactile has added something that I was lacking.

NF: What aspects of quiltmaking do you not enjoy?

NO: I send all of my stuff out for quilting. I have tried taking classes from several people. I just can't seem to get the hang of how to machine quilt my own stuff. I have now got a mid-size frame and I find that's much easier than trying to move my hands around on the machine. I couldn't make my brain and hands go in the same direction apparently. With the frame I can operate the machine on top and kind of drive it like you would a pencil or anything else. That seems to work better for me. I hope some day to get to the point where I'll be able to do my own. I'm not really at that point yet. I don't spend enough time at it. It's not my favorite thing.

NF: Have you hand quilted some of your quilts?

NO: Oh, yes. Especially at first. When I did small things I hand quilted them. I took lessons at one point with a lady named Ginny Salter, who was a wonderful hand quilter. She was a former teacher so she was a stickler for detail. If you didn't do it right, you ripped it out and you did it over again. That was my first queen-sized quilt that I quilted by hand. Everything else has been smaller pieces. Wall hangings, baby quilts and things like that. I used to tie a lot of them, too. Now I found that the machine quilting holds up better for hard use.

NF: You don't object to the trend of using longarm machine quilting?

NO: No. I think it's wonderful. I am a firm believer in the fact that had the pioneers had the availability of sewing machines they would have used them, too. You use whatever makes your life easier.

NF: Would you talk about some of the art or quilt groups you belong to?

NO: I belong to a lot of the different guilds. Local guilds and state guilds. I still belong to the Vermont state guild. [Green Mountain Quilters' Guild.] I also belong to the American Quilting Society and what's the other one?

NF: National Quilting Association?

NO: NQA. National Quilting Association. Yes.

NF: Maybe you could tell of some of your memories about the Green Mountain Quilters' Guild? Some of the jobs where you've provided volunteer time.

NO: Connie Page and I were co-chairs of the Membership Committee for eight years for the state Guild. It was a job that we enjoyed. It was before computers and everything so it was pretty much done by hand. She lived in Hyde Park and I lived in Fairfax at the time. [Vermont towns.] We would have to plan a meeting to actually get together so that we could work on this type of stuff. We didn't try to do it over the phone. That was always fun. We'd always plan to go out to lunch or go out afterwards as a reward, or do potluck or whatever. We did that because both of us were fairly new to the Guild and we found that it would be a good way to get to meet a lot of the members that weren't in our local area.

NF: Some of the local groups that you've been a member of. What are the names of those groups?

NO: There used to be the Fairfax-Georgia Quilters. I guess the first classes that I took were from a lady who was a retired Home Ec teacher, Beeda Bailey. She lived in Fairfax. We used to go to each other's homes for the Fairfax-Georgia Quilters. There were a lot of older ladies who have passed on by now. Beeda being one of them. Rebecca Ballard is still alive and she was part of that group. Rebecca is a fantastic lady. She has never owned an electric sewing machine. Everything that she has ever made has been done either by hand or on a treadle machine.

NF: My goodness.

NO: She's getting right up there.

NF: You've also volunteered quite a bit over the years with the Vermont Quilt Festival.

NO: My first year at the Festival to stay was 1988. Including that year, I've volunteered every year since. Come to find out, which I didn't realize until after it was all over with and done with, but last year 2009 I had more volunteer hours than anybody that kept track. I'm sure that Board members put in a lot more but they don't keep track of their time. As a strict volunteer, I had the most number of hours.

NF: It does require so many volunteers to run a show like that one.

NO: It's really nice because to the general public it seems to run so smoothly. Those of us that are kind of behind the scenes, we realize all the little glitches that get taken care of before it becomes public. Which is the way it should be. People go to these things to enjoy themselves. They don't go to find out who's crabbing with who or all of the in-between stuff.

NF: You've gone to some of the other major quilt shows?

NO: I've been to Paducah twice. [Kentucky.] To Houston twice. [Texas.] I don't know how many times I've gone to The Gathering. I used to go when it was in Westford, Massachusetts. Now they've moved it to Nashua, New Hampshire. I've gone there several times, also.

NF: As far as your favorite techniques, what would you say?

NO: I love appliqué. I know a lot of people don't but I do. I love appliqué and I like to embroider. I like the handwork, other than the fact of actually hand quilting. For that you've got to practice in order to be really good at it and you've also got to build up a callous on your finger. I don't sew long enough to do that.

NF: What are some of your favorite materials?

NO: I try to use one hundred percent cotton. I like the cotton battings. I like the blends that you don't have to quilt so tight together. Of course all the new cotton battings have--it's not sizing--what do you call it? It's on the front and back of it.

NF: It's a layer woven to help hold it.

No. Yes. So you don't have to quilt so close together. I like using those. However, polyester has its place because you get the warmth without the weight. If you have a really large quilt its sometimes better to use the polyester because otherwise you get up more tired than when you went to bed. If you sleep under it.

NF: I'd like you to describe this studio that we're sitting in. [both speak.] It's the place where you create.

NO: It's a mess. I've got a shadow box on the wall that was given to me by my son and daughter-in-law for Christmas, to put my ribbons in. I have that up on the wall. I have a peg board with all of my rulers. Or a good share of my rulers. I have four or five floor-to-ceiling book shelves where I have many magazines that I have complete collections of, and all of my quilting books. I've kind of outgrown that now. I've got stacks of books. I always keep a few baby-sized quilts made. There's at least one boy one and one girl one so you're never caught short if there's someone who needs a baby quilt. I have been called upon at different times to provide something for some poor gal that's at the hospital that has nothing to wrap her baby in to bring it home from the hospital. So I've provided quilts for that, too.

NF: That's a nice tradition that you've set up for yourself.

NO: There's another gal. She's a part in our Stitch & Bitch group. She lives in Swanton. [Vermont.] Bonnie Evans. She got me going taking it on. I've made so many quilts. Once your kids and grandkids all have quilts for their beds and everything, what are you going to do then? You still have the desire to make them. I go through, usually twice a year, and pick out quilts that I take over to our local hospital for palliative care. I always get a nice thank-you note from them and sometimes you get thank-you notes from a person whose family the quilt was given to. Now I've started doing the Quilts of Valor for the soldiers. We've done some of that kind of stuff, too. In the guilds we do a lot of charitable work.

NF: That's very commendable.

NO: Like I said, once your kids all have them. Although this year I'm doing quilts for the grandchildren again because the one granddaughter just had her room done over. She requested a new quilt for it. Of course because she wants one, her brother also has to have one. His room is going to be the next one that's done over. After his mother and father recover from having done the daughter's room.

NF: [laughs.] Here in your sewing space, you have a nice area for cutting and sewing.

NO: I retrieved an old desk that was going to be thrown in the dump. I've set it up on those bed risers to make it the perfect height for cutting. I've retired my real cutting table that I purchased because the desk holds more. If you can find an area that you can cut with. I've got piles of stuff here and there and everywhere. I just move one to make room enough to cut what I might need to cut then gradually it gets piled up again. I have bins that have my scraps in.

NF: You have a design wall?

NO: I do. My husband made that for me when we moved here. It covers my bookcases. Part of them. It's made out of the two-inch pink Styrofoam. I put white flannel over the top of it. I can just slide it back and forth to get access to the bookcases. It's lightweight and just stands on the floor. It goes to within two or three inches of the ceiling. I can just move it wherever. If I ever have to move from this house, or something like that, it can be taken apart into two four-by-eight sheets. As it stands right now, it's pretty much eight-feet square.

NF: When you design projects, you use that quite a bit?

NO: I rarely design anything of my own. I use it when I get all the blocks done and lay them out to find a pleasing arrangement. Or if you want to make sure that you're keeping them straight you can put them on the design wall. You look at them and see if you have fabrics that are the same next to each other. If you don't want that, you can rotate them. It gets kind of tricky sometimes. As you get older, it sure beats leaning over and doing it on the floor. Plus I have cats that if they see a top or anything on the floor, they think that it's playtime. They burrow and mess everything all up. This way, by putting them up on the design wall, they stay until I'm ready to sew them.

NF: Your stash is quite varied.

NO: I have a separate room for most of my stash. It's a seven-by-eight room with floor to ceiling shelves. I have the majority of it there. I also have some wardrobes and bins sitting around that also have fabric in them. I have an addiction. I figure at least when I die there will be something that someone can get some good out of. I know I won't begin to use it all up before I die. [both speak.] I will have something to pass on.

NF: You have a good palette to choose from when you have an idea for another project.

NO: I know but it always seems like there's one fabric that you're lacking. Just that right shade. So you have to go out and buy more. Unfortunately, once I get into the shop I not only get what I was going for, but I get half a dozen or more other things, as well.

NF: What do you think makes a great quilt?

NO: Scraps. Scrap quilts are my favorite. I've collected fabric since 1988 when I got into quilting. Even now I can look at some fabrics, I can't tell you where I got them or where they came from or anything. But I can look at some of them and remember who I was with, where I found them. Not always what I paid for them because sometimes you'd rather not know. They have a lot of memories in them.

NF: What makes a quilt artistically powerful?

NO: To different people it's different things. I personally like scrap quilts. I like art quilts to see but I would never want to change myself into an art quilter. I appreciate the work that goes into them and I appreciate a thing of beauty. This year at the Vermont Quilt Festival they had quite a controversy over whether this one thing was actually a quilt or not. It was three-dimensional. It was probably five-by-seven feet. Basically you could walk inside it. I think that maybe that's the future of quiltmaking. We've often done embellishments on our flat wall hangings. Even though you couldn't sleep under this, it did have the elements of a quilt. It had a back, a batting and a front to it. It had to be considered a quilt, I guess.

NF: That reminds me that some years you've helped, in your volunteer capacity, with the Contest Committee at the Vermont Quilt Festival.

NO: You learn so much. I scribe for the judges. You learn so much from the different judges as to what they're looking for, in a contest quilt. I have won ribbons but I never make a quilt for competition. I always make the quilt first. Just because people are constantly after you, 'Why don't you enter something?' I've been basically forced, even by my husband [laughs.] and kids, to put them in a show. That's secondary to me. I just enjoy doing it.

NF: Some of the critiques that the judges have are very personal sometimes to a particular judge.

NO: Definitely. Carter Houck always used to be one that wanted the batting to go all the way out to the edge of the binding. She also would walk in and she look at a quilt. That was when we used to have VQF [Vermont Quilt Festival.] at Norwich [University.] in Northfield. [Vermont.] We held it in the Fieldhouse. Often during the summer there was a lot of humidity in there. So the quilts that normally would hang nice and flat would be all ripply. She would stand there and put her hands on her hips and she'd say, 'You know that quilt probably looks delightful on the bed, for which it was intended. But hanging here, it looks like an old rag.' [laughs.] Then she would proceed to put that aside and judge it on its qualities she was looking for. There is a criteria for judging a quilt. She often put that on her comments, too, 'I'm sure it would be lovely for the use for which it was intended.' But it never was intended to be a contest quilt.

NF: What makes a quilt appropriate for a museum or special collection, in your mind?

NO: There again, pretty much anything could be appropriate depending on whatever the museum is looking for. Some quilts are a treasure trove of fabrics, which perpetuates the history of quiltmaking. Other quilts are there strictly because of their beauty or because of their technique. It's whatever they're looking for at the time. It could vary from museum to museum.

NF: What makes a great quiltmaker?

NO: Loving what you do. I think some of that comes through in your work, like I love cats. I do a lot of patterns that have cats in them. I have an enormous amount of cat fabric. I think that if you really enjoy it. That was one of the reasons I quit teaching. I was finding that I wasn't enjoying doing it because I was on a schedule where I had to rush. I think that if they had diagnosed it way back when, I would probably be ADHD. [Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.] I never can have just one thing going. I've always got a multitude of them. Sometimes I work on appliqué. Sometimes I work on piecing. Sometimes I work on bindings, to put them on by hand. Whatever you feel like doing at the time.

NF: I wondered if you have made little quilts for your cats?

NO: I actually have done that. But the little buggers won't use them. [laughs.] They'd rather get on the big ones and mess them all up. They have had their own personal quilts. In fact, I have a dining room table that has a little shelf underneath. One of my cats likes to sleep there. I have a little quilt on there right now that she sleeps on, when she sees fit.

NF: [laughs.] Whose works are you drawn to and why?

NO: Pretty much anybody's. Like I said, I'm not specific. As I'm getting older and don't have the precision that I used to have, I like to do the simpler quilts. I'm just thrilled nowadays that they're starting to come out with so many patterns for the charm squares, jelly rolls, et cetera. That cuts your time in half so that you can make more. [laughs.]

NF: Are there any artists from the art world that have influenced you?

NO: No. I don't really know of any. When Christine Fries did the quilt "Starry, Starry Night," I did recognize that as a painting and thought she did a wonderful depiction of it in a quilt. But I wouldn't even begin to try to do anything like that.

NF: Why is quiltmaking important to your life?

NO: It gives me something to do that is something that, other than myself, someone else will derive enjoyment from. I think basically I'm a giving-type person, with restrictions. I want to give what I want to give, not necessarily what I should give, or what anybody else thinks I should give. I do get as much enjoyment out of seeing others enjoy the things that I have made as I do making them myself.

NF: In what ways do your quilts reflect your community or region?

NO: We've had some local quilters who have designed patterns that would enhance or specifically be Vermont quilts. Right now, there's a lady up in Newport [Vermont.] who designed a bunch of Redwork embroidery patterns that I'm in the midst of doing. Things that depict Vermont, specifically. There's the outline of the state map. There's sugaring. There's two or three others. There's fly-fishing. There's back-packing. All of the different things that have to do with Vermont or that you think of when you see Vermont. Our old barns or a lot of that kind of stuff. I have always enjoyed going on the Shop Hops. I have finally started making some of the quilts that I picked up the patterns for, for all of these years. The first ones, especially, were designed depicting Vermont scenes. The apples from the orchards. Sailboats from Lake Champlain. Last year in the Franklin County Guild we did a block-of-the-month. It was not compulsory, it was anybody that wanted to do it. They chose as their theme Lake Champlain. So we had pictures of Champ [a legendary aquatic inhabitant.], the forts and the lighthouses. It would not mean anything to anybody that wasn't familiar with the things around Vermont. But to somebody that was maybe born and brought up here and then had to move, because of circumstances beyond their control, I think it would be really nice for somebody like that to have something like that to look back at and remember happy times.

NF: Happy memories associated with that.

NO: Oh, yes.

NF: What do you think about the importance of quilts in American life?

NO: They've always been important. First out of necessity for warmth. Now even though we use them for warmth, they've become more of an art. Particularly pretty things. Like I said, nowadays people go out and buy the fabrics and everything matches as well as you want it to. It's gotten away from being a necessary thing to being wanted. Sometimes needed. For peace of mind, I suppose. It's evolved over the years, but I think it's always been part of American life.

NF: In what ways do you think quilts have special meaning for women's history in America?

NO: There were so many people that worked on quilts. The slaves, for instance. Even now, some of the Indians that are on reservations. They work on them simply because their life is so hard that they feel they need something of beauty or a sense of accomplishment. So much of that history has been lost because we're now in the technology age. Back then, it was by word of mouth. Women died much younger than they do nowadays, many of them. So a lot of that stuff didn't get passed down to future generations. I think it's very important that we indulge our younger generation in learning about it so that they can continue it.

NF: So the advances in technology, you think, is a good thing in the quilting world?

NO: I think it's developed a whole new set of problems, that's for sure. It's like whether you're rich or whether you're poor, you still have problems to overcome. They're just different kinds of problems. I think that the technological world is harder for somebody my age and older to wrap their minds around it. I think it's the way of the world. As far as keeping things on microfilm or CD's, it's going to take up so much less space than all that paper did. Plus we're not depleting our trees. Continue with the education. Kids in school nowadays almost all have to have a computer.

NF: Do you use a computer in your quilt work, in some ways?

NO: I've got ElectricQuilt that I have used in the past. I've enjoyed some of the chat rooms. I did the Dear Jane Quilt. [reproductions of the Jane Stickle Civil War era Vermont quilt in the Bennington Musuem collection in Bennington,Vermont.] There was a whole bunch of Janiacs, they call themselves. People all over the world that were working on the same quilt and the same pattern, but using their own fabrics and ways of doing it. I think it brings people closer together. I have computer pen pals that are quilters that are in far away lands that I will probably never meet. I have one friend who lives in England who I had the pleasure of meeting a couple of different times. Without quilting I never would have met her or some of these other people, either.

NF: Did you have your Dear Jane Quilt completed for one of the reunions? That were held in Vermont?

NO: No. It's still not completed. I can't even tell you what year I started it. I've gotten stymied at about fifty-five blocks. I am around halfway done with it. I did the unfortunate thing of taking the easy blocks first. People that I know that have had success at it have done more of row by row so that you get some easy ones mixed in with some hard ones. They seem to stick to it better than I have.

NF: The interesting thing is that the quilt that started it all was made right here in Vermont.

NO: Yes. It was a lady who had, I can't remember if it was her husband or her son that was off in the service.

NF: I think all the men in the family were gone.

NO: Probably. She worked on it to not only honor them, but also to occupy her time and to provide something that would be warm. I think that was partially designed by someone who had a lot of foresight that realized that it was a good way to ensure continuity of some of the quilting.

NF: How do you think quilts can be used, besides on the bed?

NO: I've seen them on the walls. I've seen them on ceilings. I've seen children playing with them. Little girls with their dolls. Little boys with stuffed animals. They tuck them into bed at night. They're a great comfort. I've seen quilts that were made from deceased husbands' or sons' clothing that bring a lot of comfort. Plus they absorb a lot of tears. They can be used for that. They can be used to occupy your time if you've got a lot of time on your hands and want to do something for somebody else.

NF: How do you think quilts can be preserved for the future?

NO: We have one of the greatest National Treasures right in our back yard, in the Shelburne Museum. Putting quilts in a place where they are properly taken care of ensures that they will be around for many generations to come. Of course, taking pictures of everything. Plus doing this oral history of many quiltmakers and why they did what they've done and continue to do. It's not just in America. It's all over the world.

NF: Where are some of the quilts now that you have made? Where in the world?

NO: I sent them when they had wildfires in Alaska. I sent quilts for that. I have swapped fabric and blocks with gals in Australia. I've never had anybody in South America. It has been in Europe and Asia. A lot in Canada and here in the United States.

NF: What do you think is the biggest challenge for quiltmakers today?

NO: Trying to come up with something new and different. Basically, it's all been done. They can only enhance upon it.

NF: Nancy is there anything else that you would like to add to today's interview?

NO: Can't think of anything. I usually am quite free with talking and I think we've covered most of everything. At least all the important stuff.

NF: I'd like to thank Nancy Orcutt for allowing me to interview her today as part of the Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories project.

Our interview concluded at 2:45 PM on August 13, 2010.