I suppose in an ideal world you would have thousands of dollars of equipment and rooms of space to start quilting. There aren't many people who live in an ideal world.
The only experience I had sewing before I started to quilt was to make a rod pocket for a curtain... usually I didn't even hem the bottom edge.
I started by reading "Quilting for Dummies" and "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Quilting." I pieced my first quilt (a queen-size original-design bedspread) on my round kitchen table using a crappy sewing machine that wouldn't sew a straight seam if you paid it. I hand quilted it in strips of blocks (my own version of quilt-as-you-go) and joined the strips together from directions in a book that made sense to me. It took a year for that first quilt to be finished, and I love it.
That was four years ago. I've gotten better equipment, made more quilts, and one of my quilts that I made after having quilted for only two years has been juried into a national and an international show this year. I've also had one used in an independent film.
I suppose if we all waited until we had more resources before having children, we would have population zero. Most of us make do with whatever resources we have when having babies. Some people stop at one child and some go on to have many more children. The responsibility of making a quilt vs. a child is much less. If you don't like it, the quilt won't ever want you to buy it a car.
