Originally Posted by Happy Tails

I'll start........One Christmas, a few years ago, I didn't know what to get anybody for Christmas, and I remembered a quilted tree skirt my old boss had made me for Christmas years back. Well I decided I wanted to make one for each member of the family. I went to Walmart and bought a sewing machine (I didn't even know how to thread it, I had never sewed before) I got some Christmas fabric and a pair of scissors(LOL) and proceeded to cut out, with scissors 100's of 6" squares. They turned out really nice so I decided to take a quilting course. Keep in mind, I know nothing about quilting OR sewing. The course was the snowball quilt. I had wanted to make this for my dear little Mother and Father for Christmas, so off I went to pick up the items on the supply list. The first night of the course, the teacher was showing us the finished product and I said (in a room full of strangers) OMG that isn't big enough (it was a lap quilt) I said my mother watches TV in bed and my Dad watches in the den, how they gonna share that? After a very long time of pleading and bribing (with Tim Hortons coffee) I was able to talk the teacher into doing the pattern for a queen size quilt. She did this with UNDISGUISED resistance. Anyway, was I in for a shock, we would do a step in class and our homework was to complete that step for the whole quilt for the next step in the next class,, Well I stayed up all night preparing, and after cutting out 600+ 6" squares and 920 little 2 squares (learned to use a rotory cutter) I was ready for the next step. After each class (6 week course) I spent the entire week till the next class carefully completing each step. Each week the teacher looked so surprised that I had completed every single bit of homework. OMG I was so proud of this quilt...The very last class, my teacher turned to the class and said - I would like to publicly apologize to Wendy (I thought omg what did I do) and she said in all the years of teaching, whenever she took her time to rework a lap quilt to a full size quilt for a student, they never completed it and this was the reason she really didn't want to do it for me. But I made her proud!! And that's how I got started in quilting :) And I've never looked back. It was a tied quilt (never would do another one) and I can tell you I had the sorest fingers in the world. Why I kept quilting, I'll never know, lol I struggle with it because I don't have anybody in my family that sews, but I've learned a lot on this board and on You Tube....thanks for listening, Here's a couple pics of that very first quilt Wendy