Lynda Milligan & Nancy Smith started the business together as the owners of Great American Quilt Factory, a retail store that opened in 1981. In 28 years, Great American Quilt Factory has grown quite a bit! In addition to expanding their retail business to the internet, the location they are now in is approximately 7000 square feet and has over 4500 bolts of fabric, over 200 book titles, 500 pattern titles, and numerous gifts, greeting cards, and other quilting and sewing related projects and items.
Not only do Lynda and Nancy oversee the operations of their retail store, they also run a successful publishing division, Possibilities. Under their direction, the Possibilities team creates projects for books and patterns. Designing quilts and projects, sewing them, writing and testing directions, book and pattern editing and layout, marketing, advertising, and order fulfillment all take place on the other side of the door from our retail store. Possibilities has written and published over 70 high quality quilting books, as well as patterns.
If those projects didn't keep them busy enough, Nancy, Lynda and the Possibilities design team also work hard to design various lines of fabric and pre-printed panels.Since 1991, Nancy and Lynda have designed for Chapel House, VIP/Cranston, Henry Glass, Avlyn, Inc., and are currently designing for Quilting Treasures and QT Express. To date, Possibilities has designed over 60 different fabric lines.
The popularity of Nancy and Lynda's books has allowed them to be on HGTV's Simply Quilts numerous times. You can find them appearing in the following episodes:
- I Spy Napping Quilt (QLT-303)
- Teaching Kids to Quilt, Irish Chain Quilt (QLT-444)
- Quilt Home Decor, S.W.A.K Envelope Quilt (QLT-732) Featured Book: Hearts Aplenty
- Divide & Conquer (QLT-810) Featured Book: Divide & Conquer
- Quilt Toppers (QLT-1103) Featured Books: Toppers & Toppers 2
Some Little Known Facts About Nancy & Lynda:
- Both Nancy and Lynda LOVE Mexican food and margaritas! Bring on the nachos!
- Nancy adores frosting and has even been the lucky recipient of a bag of frosting from our local (and very yummy) bakery.
- Lynda loves designing quilts using EQ6!
- When you see them next, ask them about wine and creamsicles :)
- Both Nancy and Lynda are close with their families - in fact Lynda's mom works in the accounts payable/payroll department, Lynda's daughter works in receving, and two of Nancy's three daughters work at the store as well. Ashley, Nancy's middle daughter is the Director of Marketing and Human Resources and Laura, Nancy's youngest is the Webmistress, technical support guru, and can most often be seen working with one of her boys close at hand.
So as you can see we are in for a real treat. Be sure to get your ticket, if you have already.
