Away from Home: Quilts Inspired by the Lowell Factory Girls
Nancy Rink is an award-winning quilter and pattern designer. The year 2004 was a very big year for Nancy. In April 2004 she was the featured artist at the Best of the Valley Quilt Show in Tulare, California. Bobbie Moore, the show's organizer, was quoted in theBakersfield Californiansaying, "Rink's work is especially unusual. She's an applique artist and her stitches are almost invisible, they're exquisite. She makes beautiful use of color and motion in her work." At the 2004 Houston International Quilt Festival,Remembrance of NannyandDesert Starwere both given Honorable Mentions. Also in 2004,Dogtooth Violetsearned one of the top awards in the Kaufman Quilt Quest. Nancy was won awards at other national shows including the Pacific International Quilt Festival, the Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza, the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival, and the Indian Heritage Quilt Show. Her medallion-style quiltDesert Starwas awarded first place in the 2002 From the Mills Contest and was on display at the American Textile History Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts.After 23 years of teaching junior high and high school English, Nancy is now a professional quilter and pattern designer. She still remembers her first experience at quilting. "My first quilt was huge, heavy, and appliqued. The colors were hideous; the quilting stitches were gigantic. The materials I used were all wrong. Basically, I really had no idea what I was doing." It was such an overwhelming project that it was several years before she attempted another. At the grocery store one day, she picked up a quilting magazine "just to look" and before she knew it, she was making quilts again.When she got back into quilting, it was in a serious way. Her husband, Oliver, encouraged her to submit quilts for publication and to try her hand at entering contests. Her first contest submission won a prize. Then she thought she'd try her hand at the 1997 Hoffman Challenge. To her amazement and delight,Byzantine Compassgarnered a first place ribbon in the mixed technique category. Since then, Nancy's quilts have been featured in magazine's such asQuilter's Newsletter Magazine,McCall's Quilting,Quiltmaker, andQuilt. Other quilts have appeared in calendars and books.Oliver A. Rink has served as professor at California State University, Bakersfield, since 1975. As a member of the History Department, he has taught a variety of courses ranging from a bio-history course titled "Plagues and Peoples," co-taught with ecology Professor Maynard Moe, to a world history course series, to courses in American Colonial History, his area of expertise. He is the author ofHolland on the Hudson: An Economic and Social History of Dutch New Yorkthat traces the history of New Netherland from Henry Hudson's exploration of the region in 1609 to surrender of the Dutch colony to an English fleet in 1664. He is also a contributing author toThe Empire State: A History of New York. After taking up cycling for about a year, Oliver rode in his first one-hundred mile race in 2011, finishing in the pouring rain.Nancy and Oliver have three grown children: Diane, David, and Gary. They live in Bakersfield, California, with their dog Daisy.