All wonderful stories, and reading them you realize that for most of us, it is a built in desire and love. I can remember sewing hems on feedsacks on my grandma's treadle when I could barely reach the treadle. My mom made all our clothing, and recycled from one child to another. I never cared about knitting or crochet, but mom and grandma did a lot of crochet work and embroidery. Back then, if you wanted something nice and pretty for your self or your home, you made it. Learned a little about embroidery basics as a kid. In 5th grade we girls had to take a cooking and sewing class. Sewing was first, we had to make an apron , a potholder, and headband to use in our cooking class. That is really when I fell in love with sewing( hatrd cooking!) In 7th grade we had to make a dress, and I was so proud of mine. On the other hand, I begged for a store bought skirt and sweater that same year. The first store bought clothes I ever had. From then on I made almost all my own clothing, especially wool skirts for winter and full summery skirts. I learned real fast I could have a lot more if I made them!! I hated making buttonholes, so mom did those for me. None of my sisters cared about sewing, but they liked me to sew for them. When my daughter was born, I started sewing for her, and I made all her clothing and mine after that. still love sewing, it is a very important part of my life. I made an embroidered quilt for my first, I was about 26. It seemed to take forever! Then a few years after that, I got an ad for a lap quilting book, and I was hooked. I would spend hours planning out patterns on graph paper, figuring down to the inch how much fabric I needed for each thing. I didn't even know you could buy patterns, so every time I saw a quilt in a magazine that I thought was pretty, I would start about making my own pattern of it. Made lots of patterns, but only a few quilts. LOL gave up doing that when the grand children came along, went back to clothes for first GD when she was born, and now that I'm not doing much clothing anymore, I decided to get back to quilting, got hooked on this QB, and if I don't stay off the PC I'll never get anything done except bookmarking ones I see and love!!