What piqued your interest in quilting? How did you get started quilting, self taught or classes etc? How do you do things differently now than when you first started? Do you have a picture of your first quilt to share with the forum? Was it a keeper or a gift?
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My interest in quilting was piqued when I saw some pre-cut blocks that matched the color and border paper in my parents bedroom. I purchased the blocks and put the quilt together for my parents for Christmas. My mother has since adopted the quilt and claims it was her Christmas present.

I have been sewing for years and taught myself to quilt by surfing info on the Internet and books.

My first quilt I pieced the top and but had the quilt sandwiched and quilted by a local quilter in order to have it completed in time for Christmas. The quilt was not as large as I had hoped but I was clueless at that time about sashing, borders or squaring up a quilt. I also purchased the binding strips for the binding. The lady that quilted for me...said to Never purchase bias strips...use up those scraps to make your binding....hun...off to the Internet to look up quilt binding...lol.

I have completed several quilt they have all been gifts, I have yet to keep a quilt for myself. I started one this fall that is the "keeper" quilt for me and DH.

A friend of mine wanted to take a class. I didn't want to but she begged me so I went. Long story short... I quilt and she doesn't.

Sybil

My grandmother got me started!! She made lots of quilts and I loved each and every one!! (And she let me treadle while she sewed :roll: ).

I've always regretted that she never got around to making a quilt for me and that I didn't "grab" one she had made after she died :cry: :cry:

So my goal this year is to start making quilts for the grandkids....

i always sewed garments. my father had a shop near a small manufacturer of -who knows? - but he used double knits. one day my father brought home a box of leftover pieces, too small to use for child's clothing. i made my first quilt out of double-knit polyester, with an old blanket for batting, and tied with embroidery floss. the backing was an old sheet with a bad stain on one end. the good part was big enough for my son's first 'youth- size' quilt. the back wraps around to the front. he used it in his first big-boy bed i still have it. MG, is it ugly! i forgot all about it until you reminded me. selective memory, i suppose. sheesh!

My mom has quilted for years, she ties her quilts' and I don't think I ever appreciated them a great aunt hand quilted and last year I thought I gotta try that, so my son bought me a mat and rotary cutter for christmas. I LOVE hand quilting and the way it looks I have made 5 alomst 7 quilts and Hand quilt them all, to me personally it is a goal and the only way, I love the old fashioned look and it keeps me busy. The Quilt in my Avitar is my first it is full size and the Lamone star.

I always wanted to learn to quilt. I figured when I retired then I would have time to learn. I never really sewed before, unless you call making a shift dress in home ec in school. A friend of mine does quilting and she said why wait, so I bought a sewing machine, she helped me pick out some material and I made my first wallhanging. Well I should say I helped make my first wall hanging. But she taught me alot and I really am glad she took the time to teach me. I am still a novice, but do enjoy looking at and buying material and trying to find patterns I feel I can do. I have yet to make a bed size quilt, but that is a goal one day.

One day I decided I wanted to try something new. I had tried other kinds of crafts, but never stick to it. I decided to try quilting, that was about 15 years ago and I'm still loving it. I taught myself to quilt through books and the TV show Simply Quilts.

Janie

I've always loved the look and feel of quilts but I didn't sew. I always said that when I retired and had time...I would learn how to quilt. While waiting for DH to finish an appointment one day..I was browsing Wallworld..ran across the "starter quilt" package..you know..cutter, mat, and ruler. Bought a starter book some remnants and went from there. That was 2006. I watched lots of Simply Quilts and read alot of mags and internet articles and of course...scream for help on this board. I love it!

I have always enjoyed looking at "real" quilts and fabric, but have never been a fan of the $39- $59 quilts sold online or in stores. The mass produced just weren't good enough for me. :lol:

I have lost hours at quilt shows and shops. I just never could bring myself to try it, but I don't really know why. Then my mom died last spring. Long story short, she was not really the mom type and we hadn't really talked in years. It is sad, but I just always remember her as unhappy and self-absorbed and after her funeral I realized I had become a lot like her and I didn't want to be that way.

So, I resolved to find my bliss. I tried exercising, I saw a counselor, and I went to another quilt show.

Quilting, it seems, is my bliss, I love everything about it: the designing, the shopping (really love that part), the sewing, the assembly, the quilting, the binding, and chatting online.

I love love love that there are no real mistakes in quilting that cannot be changed or altered to work in another way. Lately, I have found myself taking that idea and applying it in other places in my life as well.

I find quilting to be easy and challenging at the same time.

I have learned by taking a few classes, reading online, purchasing a few books, drilling LQS employees for information, and watching numerous quilting shows and videos.

As I have written on this board before, I have learned so much from all of you and feel so comfortable asking questions and, when able, sharing the little bit of knowledge with you that I have gained.

And as expensive as this hobby has turned out to be, my husband says the change in me is worth every penny and I find I am happier in general. My cats are also big fans of the quilts and the piles of fabric and batting.

Probably way more information than you wanted, but you asked and that's my answer. Maribeth :lol:

hear, hear!

I bought a sailboat late last year that needs new cushions. I figured "It's sewing, how hard can it be"(whole nother story there). Anyway, I ended up with an industrial 30 inch free motion sewing machine
[IMG]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...ve/Consew1.jpg[/IMG]
and thought, since it's here.... After some construction experiments I decided to go deep piecing a top to quilt and this is what I have so far
[IMG]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...e/DSCF2056.jpg[/IMG]

fanrastic!

Learned to sew in Home Ec and ended up making all my clothes for years. Made clothes for kids and hubby, jeans, t-shirts, jackets, westren shirts, curtains, furniture covers and embroidered the name tags for hubby's National Guard buddies. Made small baby panel quilts, hand quilted them, for gifts and always wanted to do a real quilt. Had a friend bring me the scraps from a clothing maker....the polyester stuff. Made crocheted rugs and a quilt that I tied. After retirement thought finally time to quilt, ha ha. Made my grandson a full size Summer at the Farm quilt. Turned out cute and went on from there. Would love lessons, learning it all the hard way. Have no sense of color so my DIL will pick colors for me, she does a great job but I don't always wait for her :roll:
This board gives me so much help and inspiration, thank you, thank you! :D

I have always made cross stitch samplers for any of my friends that have had babies. Then, last summer, I had two friends that were due to give birth within a month of each other. I had finished the cross stitch sampler for the first friend, but didn't have time to do one for the second friend, and plus I wanted a change from doing cross stitch. Knitting or crocheting would take too long to learn to a satisfactory standard, but I could already sew and use a sewing machine, and knew the basics of patchwork. So with some research online and A LOT of help and encouragement from everyone on here, I made a simple, patchwork squares baby quilt. Now all my friends with babies have a quilt, and have been tryinga different pattern with each one and loving it!!!

Maribeth, your story is very inspirational. You go girl! I started quilting because I have to be doing "something". Doll houses, stamping, card making, stained glass, now quilting. Do you know you can have UFOs in just about every hobby there is! I can prove it!

Pam,

Thank you, that is so sweet. The other wonderful thing about quilting is that I feel artistic for the first time.

And yes, I am aware of the nature of UFOs. My husband is into puzzles and model sailboats and he has a closet full of these UFOs. My sister loves making stained glass and she has made some beautiful pieces. We are planning on exchanging projects. I will be making a red and black (her favorite color combo) quilt to give her and she is making a few pieces for me to hang in the windows.

Maribeth

DavidMichael that's great progress, keep up the great work.

Maribeth good for you, I'm glad you where able to find a part of you that you deserve to know.

I rebelled against quilting. My mother did many quilt as you go log cabins when I was a teen. My grandmother had been a seamstress long ago and had taught me how to hand sew during that same time, so I knew enough to fix things, and have a much cherished doll blanket that was my first quilt. Funny it is my first quilt. Though I have always thought of the one in my avatar as my first one. I'll try to post the other later.

DH offered many many times to buy me a sewing machine I refused. Many things some of them seemingly no big deal and others very hard for me, lead me to make a quilt from my daughter's baby clothes. Because of my hands I did it all on the machine. I love it and feel that no fabric is to much of a challenge and no pattern I wont try that doesn't eat me first. ;)

I always made my granddaughter's clothes, but when we started homeschooling, she didn't need school clothes. It just so happened there was a small quilting group close by, that you could donate scraps, thread, etc., to, you didn't have to quilt to join. They donated all their quilts to local women's shelter. I had no intention of quilting. My dh wants to know where the REAL Carmen is, because the REAL Carmen said she would never quilt. I told him that was before I learned about rotary cutters, rulers, quick piecing methods, etc.LOL That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I started out not quilting, but, going shopping many trips w/a quilter. Her only son left for college and she retired all in the same year and was looking for someone to help her fill a void and I was that friend. Even though I did not know how to sew, I'd shop w/her and help her pick out colors. She convinced me to do a Dear Jane w/her, paper pieced. Verbally told me how to do it and I raced home, dug in the bottom of a closet for my old brother (that burned up w/in this 6months!)sewing machine and sewed my first paper pieced and first quilt block....upside down!:))I figured it out and we had a great time buying and sharing our fat quarters for this project. I became very addicted to quilting at that point and now have 2 janomes in my space:)Skeat

Ahhh I remember my grandma's quilts when I was a child. She took scraps of our old dresses and made something majical from them. A blanket with beautiful sunbonnet sues and stars and blocks that if you stared at them, they became stories and the patterns danced in my head until I learned myself from a checked out library video in davenport iowa.

The first book I ever bought was an Elenore Burns log cabin book. A quilt in a day! You tore the fabric strips and sewed them together. That was b.c. (before cutters)They weren't invented yet. Ha ha ha ... But, being a person who loves family history and tradition. I knew I could do it! And I could.

The first one was a pink and blue floral log cabin, a gift for my best friend's birthday. A queen sized , log cabin in a feilds and furrows setting. As promised by elenore, it was sewn into a top in a day. Then I used the small pink floral as a backing, added the batting and tied hundreds of pink and blue little embrodry thread knots. a labor of love, but oh was I proud to present it to her, on her special day. And she still has it to this day.

davidmichael, who's your little buddy? if you stop the quilt now, it's just about the right size.

I thought I was joining a cross stitch group...came away with a handful of scraps and a bit of tracing paper template...this was the result and I was hooked :D

Great stories everyone. Thanks for sharing.

Well, I have always loved quilts,never thought it would be me quilting. I considered myself more the outdoorsy type, hiking, camping ,horseback riding,dancing and such things are things I love doing. But notice, none of the things menstioned above do I get an end product,some actual thing that I can show and touch, I only figured that out after I made my first quilt.
So anyway, we were at a work contract in Boise ID for three monnths Sep-Dec 2007. It was a little cold, and I was driving home from work first week we got there, and I saw a banner saying: Beginner Quiltmaking classes, iregister inside. Wellm being who I am, I went in and asked the lady behind the counter "I can't sew and don't have a sewing machine, can I still sign up", she said "OH yes, we love your type", well, the rest is history.
I just bought my first sewing machine couple months back, and satarted a second quilt. I love this board for all the help and fun. I use the ternet and books for prosedures. But that class Ii took, really taught me most of the basics that I can now build on.

I love hearing all these stories!!
My story is that I have always loved looking at quilts and thought how amazing it was that someone put that much time and effort into it and made something absolutely beautiful!!!
When I had my two daughters (8 & 5) I knew I wanted to do something special. I too do the cross stitch thing and love it too!! But I was looking at a magazine and it had a memory quilt in it. I had saved some of my girls pyjamas from the time they were born till their first birthday ( and anything really special to them from then on) and decided I was going to learn how to quilt to make them a quilt out of their pyjamas! Little did I know at that point how addictive this craft is!!! I took my first class two years ago this month! A log cabin table runner!! I loved it!! So now I still have the girls pyjamas and stuff but I am doing other stuff first! I tell my husband that I have to get 'better' at quilting before I tackle working on the girls quilts!! I have always told myself that I am not giving myself a time limit for their quilts!! I figure they will probably be wedding gifts!
So now I am just enjoying and learning what I can from classes at my LQS and from this wonderful board!!! Thanks for all your help everyone!!!
Kendra :D :D

Thanks for sharing your stories!!

I've always liked the color in quilts, and I love to feel fabrics, so I wanted to do it myself! Was in Lee Wards and they were offering a class in the late 80s, so I signed up and the rest as they say is history! Took the class, joined a guild, went to guilt shows, bought books, wathced TV shows, visited quilt shops whenever I was in different cities, or travelling to anywhere. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the challenges and seeing all the new stuff! Can't wait to get started on my next project! Or to finish my present project! :lol:
And I love buying new fabrics with no idea what I will do with them, but I want them all!!!!!!

Marty, thanks for starting this thread. I love reading everyone's stories.

Like a lot of you, I started sewing when I was a child, took home ec, made my own clothes, etc, was not a stranger to a sewing machine.

I made my first quilt in 1982 from a kit-it was a queen size log cabin--I still have it. I used cardboard templates and hand pieced (except the borders) and hand quilted it. By the time I was finished with it I hated everything about quilting!!!

Fast forward to Fall 1999, Carlisle, PA. My next door neighbor informs me that she is going to start a neighborhood quilt group and invites me to join. I looked at her with disdain and said that I cross stitch, but I would NEVER quilt again! Never say never!! I joined the group and for 2 months I X-stitched while others worked on their quilts. By Christmas I owned a rotary cutter, mat, rulers, fabric and was finishing my first wallhanging! Quilting had come a long way in those 17 years. The rest is history!! And that X-stitch I was working on---it is still not finished!!!

I made my first quilt when I was in high school. I tacked it. I wasn't pleased. I have sewed since I was 6 years old making doll & Barbie clothes. My dear beloved grandmother taught me to knit at about 7. Don't remember her sewing that much when I was there but we always got some cute doll or clothes & knitted Barbie clothes. My mother had been making quilt tops & crossing stitching lots of pictures but she got real sick a few years ago and gave me all of her quilting stash, patterns & the like. I retired 5 years ago in April so I have almost lots of time on my hands. I saw a quilt throw at Dillard's Dept. Store & thought I could make that. It was in my son's favorite college colors & theme. So that is where it started. I have made close to 25 quilts the past couple of years. Have 5 that need quilting. Just got the material to make youngest grandson a big boy quilt. They all (5) got baby quilts. Got an embroidery machine this past year in Nov & now I'm going to incorporate that into quilting.

I never saw a quilt before in my life until I met my husband. I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to make a blanket when you can just buy a comforter in the store that's probably warmer anyway.

My mother was a home ec goddess. She was one of the first women (and first non caucasian) that graduated from a fashion school in NY. She crocheted, knitted, sewed you name it. She would go with my aunts (her inlaws) to craft fairs. She never bought anything, and wouldn't let anyone else buy anything either. She would just go home and make it....from looking at it once. When I was growing up in the early 1980's, she would get catalogs in the mail and then make whatever was in them without the pattern.

She never taught me...any of her gifts. She had gone to college in the 60's and I came along a little later than she had planned. She felt the women's movement had come along enough that she didn't have to teach me anything. She really thought that knowing how to make beautiful things was keeping me into the "mold" that so many women have to do. She didn't teach me how to cook or anything that could be considered feminine work. I still have no clue how to sew. I'd love to learn someday.

When I married, my MIL had little patience for me. She couldn't understand why I didn't know how to do ANYTHING. She let me help her make a quilt for my nieces a year or so after we married. It was very complicated and she went really fast. I think she meant to teach me a lesson, but I got a hunger for making quilts that has had me ever since. She helped me pick out a beginner machine a year or so later when I drove her crazy constantly asking about different machines. I signed up for a beginner class at Hancock's. I think that I learned to cut backwards, so that's a hard thing for me to do, but I still have the quilt bug.

My first 4 quilts were all the same pattern. Lap size rail fences. My husband's family raved about them and I've been making stuff since. 90% of what I have made, I have made in a group for charity. I've made 6 total lap size now and one queen....but countless full and twin size for charity.

My MIL ended up becoming my best friend and a good mother substitute for me. When she passed away in 2007, I was blind with grief. I got quilter's block so bad. It was people here that helped me out of it. I kept some small squares of fabric she had helped me pick out for a friend with cancer. I kept the left over squares, sewed them, and framed them. They now hang in my sewing room....with a picture of my MIL and I presenting a quilt to a charity. I will always have reminders...but I thank God everyday that she showed me my new passion. It really brought us together.

Once both of my mothers were gone, I started accumulating clothing from both of them. I don't have enough of one mom or the other to make a quilt, so I will make one that honors both of them at once.

My latest quilt, a lap size for my grandmother, has incorporated many patterns and nuances that my dear MIL taught me. I know that I will carry her gift with me everywhere.

Melissa

I satisfy my creativity urge by sewing. When the company I worked for sold in 1994, I lost my job and was not interested in getting another one. I therefore did not need to keep making clothing, although I continued to do doll making for several more years. However, I'm a bit of a fabric junkie so I started watching and taping the quilting programs on t.v. and was really fascinated by the quilts, the fabric, the notions, and the whole process. I decided to try it and I've been loving it ever since. It just gets better and better.

Mostly self-taught--I've never taken classes.

Grandma quilted until a few years ago, and I was given several of them over the years. Mom doesn't quilt. It seemed like losing a part of culture and history to not start doing it. I made my first one a year or two ago...and still haven't made many.

I learned to sew in a home ec class in high school. I did a lot of sewing, knitting, cross stitching, etc. over the years. Awhile back my mother gave me a quilt top that my great-grandmother had hand pieced back in the day. The fabric was starting to rot, and I knew I had to preserve it, so I took a quilting class at a local high school and hand quilted the top. I have been quilting on and off since them. I am now quilting almost every day, and enter our County Fair every year. It is so relaxing and fills my days.....

I wandered into our LQS to check out Pfaff embroidery machines. I have been sewing since elementary school. I bought the machine of my dreams for embroidery but was very curious about all of the quilts hanging in the shop. They looked like a puzzle that I HAD to learn to solve. I started doing the BOM there and have been hooked ever since. I wish I could say that I combine the embroidery with quilting but I rarely do - hope to eventually. Kathy

truly moved by your story of how you learned and where you got your passion for quilting from. I am sure both your mom and mom in law are looking down on you with love.

love these stories...ok, here comes mine. My mother always sewed but didn't have the patience to teach me. Her mother, my little gma, sewed, but lived a bit away, but visited about every 6 months. When I was about ten my gma was visiting and helped me make a simple cotton top. I was hooked on sewing and used most of my babysitting money on fabrics. My mother soon learned that if she let me use her machine I would make my clothes and she didn't have to buy them.
When my kids were little I guessed how to make two simple baby quilts and then somewhere down the road made a full queen size quilt in huge pastel squares and white eyelet embroidery fabric. I had been given a huge amount of this tan ? fabric...wasn't just cotton, but it worked ok for a backing. Since I had never seen anyone quilt or seen a magazine or anything, I must have sewn the backing to a used blanket in a huge asterik and then tied the quilt top to both. My kids loved it and one time took to a church sleep in and got many compliments.
Since I loved to make clothes, toys, etc. that satisfied any curiosity I had about quilts for a long time. All I had ever seen was patchwork quilts that didn't have any particular design or anything to them and they just didn't interest me enough to want to make one.
Then a few years ago, my father's mother started telling me about teaching at a senior citizen's group and they were making a fall wall hanging and all the ladies were handmaking a quilt to raffle off.
She is immensely talented, but lives across the country from me. I did get curious though and picked up a quilting magazine and found out that the world of quilt is an amazing place of colors, textures, designs, and once i realized that since you use small pieces to make the blocks, that meant you had to buy a lot of different colors of fabric. Well I had always loved fabric, but you bought one kind for one outfit...oh, this was going to be FUN!!! I thought I was going to get one book and read it and turn out quilts like the lucy episode where she was working in a factory and the candy just kept a coming!!!!
So, i went crazy buying everything in site and got seriously out of control until I got very sick and couldn't sew for over a year. Now hubby is disabled and we have to be careful, but I would say I owe the itch to my family, but my grandma n. pushed me to scratch it. I still sew other things sometimes, but my love, my passion is all about quilting now. It's like finding your way home and you didn't even know you were lost. :wink:

I took home ec and teen living( fancy name for sewing class) in high school because none of the other electives interested me. My grandmother and grandfather quilted and I had grown up seeing the things they quilted and I own one of the quilts, which was made for me by my grandfather before he died in 1988. I think the quilt was made in 1987 before he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. I cherished that quilt and it went with me everywhere I went after i got it and he had passed away. fast forward to Aug/sept of 2007. I was showing my grandma the quilt, showing her some places that were coming loose. This prompted a quilting/sewing discussion because I had made a few dresses and such for friends over the years. My grandmother asked me if I wanted to learn how to quilt. I knew that no one else in my family had an interest in learning how and my grandma has said how she always thought she would pass her knowledge on to my aunt or to one of her granddaughters, but they hadn't shown interest. So I told my grandmother that yes I would be happy to learn from her how to quilt. So she taught me what she could seeing as how she can't sew anymore due to arthritis and bad eye sight. What I didn't learn from her , I got books and I joined this website and have learned many things. I made my grandma a quilt and gave it to her this Christmas and I have heard from my aunt that my grandma wraps herself in it everyday while she sits in the living room. :) Grandma will be 89 this July.

It's been a while since I posted anything, but this one "kinda" caught my interest. I was the last of 11 children with a gap of almost 8 years between my next sister and I. (There had been 2 deaths between her and I.) Otherwise, the rest of the bunch was only about 2 years apart; like clockwork! Needless to say, I think my mother was probably pretty tired of dealing with all of us, but somehow, (maybe she knew she was done with all the birthing stuff,) had patience and tolerance for her last little sickly girl. Skinny, scrawny, sickly at the time, (but you should see me now!) respiratory problems, hard of hearing, a wandering eye, but a mother's love made me feel special anyway. Due to physical problems and the joy of living in the country, isolated from anyone closeby that was near my age, and an older sister who thought I was a big bother, my Mother took me under her special wing and taught me many of the gentle arts, that she had learned as the daughter of a fairly well to do family in Georgia. (NO! I didn't say we were wealthy! Far from it in fact!) I learned to sew at a very early age. I could run her old Singer treadle machine when I was about 6 years old, with guidance, of course! She taught me to knit, and to crochet. Somehow, she had never learned to follow directions; but could look at something and know how to do it. I taught myself to read directions for both when I was 9 years old when my oldest sister sent me some leftover yarn and crochet thread and a couple of instruction books. I learned to tat, which is almost a lost art. It is so slow, but the end results are very pretty. I remember my Mother crocheting or tatting the yokes for the homeade slips she made for me and for the collars to my blouses/dresses.
But the quilting: Sorry if I got diverted... I guess Mother was a "Purist" when it came to quilting. Everything was hand sewn. My first pieced quilt was a simple bow tie. We just had scraps back then: we used what we had. It would have been unheard of to buy new fabric, cut it up in pieces, and sew it back together again!!! So what that the whites weren't all the same? Some might have been flour sacks and the others a lot tighter woven and whiter. I know my stitches were pretty long, and if I got tired working on my pieces, Mother would say, "Just quit." "Remember whatever is worth doing, is worth doing well." I remember putting all my squares together with her help, and using an old blanket as batting, and a half worn out sheet as the backing. My, have times changed! I have no idea what happened to that old quilt. Life is sometimes unfair and somethings that should be remembered are lost in the dust of bad times.
Within the past 2 years, I have started quilting again. Have moved up from one long arm machine to a better one, and have been fortunate that a local quilt shop refers me to quite a few people. The world turns around in mysterious ways, and I'm sure my Mother would be proud of me right now if she were able to know what I'm doing. She would have been 109 this year; I am 71.
Sorry for all the rambling, guess I needed to vent a little bit. My next to the oldest sister is in Georgia, (86) has just been taken off a ventilator, and is not expected to last much longer. I can't be there, so I guess I am here, rattling away at the computer. Thanks to everyone on the list for reading this or thinking about me. All prayers for "Ida" would certainly be appreciated. I truly didn't mean to "write a book," I promise I will be shorter my next post!

In 1980 I took a quilting class and it was all done by hand with cardboard templates and many squares desighned by myself. Although it was a sampler quilt the center 6 squares were personal, so I called it a memory quilt. I made it for my son for high school graduation and all of his freinds wanted one too. This quilt was done one square at a time for quilting then all were joined with sashing and more batting. I did sew the first side of each sashing strip by machine, but the back was hand sewn. I did make one for his freind Dana too and after that made many baby quilts. For a few years I didn't seem to get around to it but then in 2003 my sister-in-law got me back into it making a cathedral window quilt. I never got that finished ( guilt on that one) because it was for my daughter and she didn't want it. But I have made many over the past five + years.
Here are the first 2 I did

My Grand Mother started me sewing when I was a very young girl. I had always wanted to learn to sew & have been sewing most all of my life. A few years ago, a dear friend of mine said lets make a walling hanging together. She had the easiest pattern, so we shopped for our fabric & started on our project. At that time, she lived in a different city than I did, so we shared all of our questions & solutions through email. Now she lives here in the same city with me & we are still sewing together. It's truly been a wonderful time for me. I love sharing together. I have made several quilts since then.