Meet Nancy

Nancy along with her husband Scott started Smoky Bear Lodge as a bed & breakfast over 25 years ago. Their desire to have an upscale Lodge with a rustic look was just the incentive Nancy needed to get into quilting nearly 20 years ago. Nancy’s quilts now adorn all the beds in their Lodge. Their business has grown and they’ve added one large cabin – The Grizzly Cabin – which sleeps up to 12 people and 2 smaller cabins – The Little Bear Cabin and Little Griz Cabin – which sleep up to 6 people each.

Having added the cabins to their business has given Nancy more beds to make quilts for – not that she was running out of things to do. She is currently working on making over-sized queen quilts for the beds in The Grizzly Cabin. Nancy enjoys all aspects of quilting from designing to piecing to machine quilting to binding and has done this on all her quilts. She has also made numerous wall hangings, lap quilts, and table runners.

Years ago a bed and breakfast lodge guest – a quilt designer – encouraged Nancy to take some quilting classes so she followed that advice and took several quilting classes. Quilting queen sized quilts was a real challenge for Nancy on her Elna Heirloom sewing machine. Then several years ago she bought a Baby Lock Crown Jewel long-arm quilting machine which not only sped up her machine quilting process on the large quilts but also enhanced it. She’s now been long arm machine quilting for many customers for over 10 years.

After attending quilting retreats hosted by others, Nancy enjoyed it so much she decided to host Quilt Retreats at their Grizzly Cabin. She really enjoys small intimate groups so nearly 15 years ago, Nancy started hosting her retreats to accommodate 4-8 quilters. Nancy is a member of Teakettle Quilters’ Guild in Columbia Falls, MT and was the featured quilter for their quilt show in 2010.