My grandmother made a few quilts in the 1920's and 30's, one for each of her 6 children, always setting the last stitches on the day they were born. But she did more crocheting and knitting. Then in the early 80's 2 of my sisters and my mother took up quilting, they were/are whizzes with sewing machines - my Mom is gone now. I failed Home Ec in school because I actually fouled up 10 different sewing machines - I can break one in 10 minutes or less!
I was very jealous of their talents, but tried not to fret about it.
One night I had a dream about a fantastic quilt - but only had details of the border, it was a dragon curved around the edges - not the whole dragon, kinda like it was holding the quilt and peeking around a corner of it. I called my younger sister the next day and started to tell her about it, and she got excited when she realized that the night before she'd had a dream about a quilt, more to do with a King Arthur theme in the center of it but couldn't look closely at the outer edge. We met for lunch and started sketching it all out - it was a fantastic concept quilt! I said, great! now you can make this quilt, and she said nothing doing! She made me take classes and learn to sew. I have to do it all by hand, but I found out that I can sew a straight line by hand, so I can quilt!
We never did make that quilt, and now I'm in Wasington state and she's in Ohio - Amish country, so we likely never will. I've got more plans for quilts than actual quilts and I love creating my own block patterns - I named one after my grand-daughter that combined a drunkards path and a star and called it Joey's Wandering Star. I never keep them, I always give them away.
My favorite quilt was one I made for my Mom called Star over Georgetown Circle. A king size quilt with 1000 pieces all sewn by hand - it took me a month to piece that bugger! It's teal, white and black. She kept it on her bed until she passed away. My baby sister has it now and will pass it on to my grand-daughter when she is older. So for me - quilting is a family tradition!