Nancy Arico will be teaching 5 classes during Road@Home:
W101 – EQ8 Designing A Quilt
W118 – Triangles, Parallelograms, And Trapezoids. OH MY!
T101 – EQ8 Designing Blocks
T114 – Scattering Triangles
F101 – Churned-Up
Crazy for Math
Nancy Arico knew she’d be a quilter. Back in the 70’s, she first gave quilting a try when she was in high school. Nancy had bought a book called “Modern Quilting” and set out to make a star block with templates and hand stitching. Well, she never finished that block but her love of quilts stay with her. Finally, about 12 years ago, Nancy decided she would give quilting another try. She signed up for a “Learn to Quilt” class at a local shop. After using rotary cutters and doing machine piecing, this time around, she “was hooked!”
Before becoming a quilt teacher, Nancy’s first love was math. Her occupation was as an actuary, a “kind of mathematician.” Consequently, Nancy loves the math aspect of quilting. Some of her classes use the EQ8 to design quilts and blocks. She also likes to teach classes focusing on geometric shapes.
Quilting During Coronavirus Lockdowns
When Nancy Arico’s oldest son went to college, she wasted no time taking over his room with her sewing and quilting. She added some Ikea furniture and a cutting table made from a door to make it complete.
She still uses that room, but a couple years ago, she opened a studio. Her original plan was to offer both the fabric artist and the student a place to connect and create. However, the Coronavirus quickly changed her model and now it is more of a quilting studio – with lights, cameras, and computers to make online teaching possible.
Since March, Nancy has been doing Zoom, sewing, Zoom, sewing…… At first, she was “thrilled” to have everything on her calendar get cancelled so she could finish up several UFOs. But it didn’t take long for Nancy to start offering some Zoom classes and gatherings. Now, her calendar is full again – with teaching — and she has to make time to squeeze in some sewing and quilting as much as she can.
Nancy says she has learned two valuable lessons from other quilters during the pandemic: “1) to look at what joy I am getting out of my time, even if there is nothing tangible to show for it. And 2) to allow my ideas time to develop at their own pace.”
Teaching at Road@Home
Prior to 2019, most of Nancy Arico’s teaching was sharing what she was learning with her guild and quilt friends. Since then, she has been teaching in person and online a few times every month. She has really developed her Zoom technique of teaching to ensure that everyone in her classes “gets a front row seat.” Says Nancy, “I use 1 or 2 additional cameras to show my work table and sewing machine as needed.”
Nancy is looking forward to “meeting new people and encouraging others to look beyond a pattern to the possibilities.” She hopes her students will find “some new ways of looking at a quilt and how to make it their own.”
To learn more about Nancy Arico, please visit her website.
