My grandmothers, and my wife's grandmothers all quilted. My paternal grandmother was perpetually busy with some type of needlecraft: sewing, knitting, crocheting, or tatting. She had no daughters, her daughters-in-law were not interested in learning anything, then her granddaughters weren't interested either. By the time I got married (the last in the family) she was pretty advanced in Alzheimer's and couldn't do her crafts anymore. It was sort of sad that she never got to pass her skills on to another generation.
My wife had tried cross-stitch, and she enjoyed it, but had a rather slow payoff. She wanted to do something crafty, but didn't really know what. I told her that Granny had quilted, and I always enjoyed sleeping under the quilts she had stashed around her house. She told me about her grandmother's quilts, and how she and her cousin got special gifts because they were the favorite grandkids. Her mom had 11 siblings and I can't count all the grandkids, but my wife and her cousin were two of the youngest and spent a lot of time at their grandmother's house.
After we talked about those memories, she decided she'd like to give it a try. We bought her an $80 Euro Pro machine at Kohl's, and she took a class at a LQS a couple of miles from here. Her first quilt turned out pretty good, but she didn't like measuring, calculating, and cutting; she just enjoyed the sewing. On our next project she complained about it. Since I'm an accountant and of course a math nerd I tried to explain how she could make her cuts and get the most useful pieces from her fabric. Eventually I ended up doing the cutting myself, so that became my standard assignment.
Then we went to take another class at another QS, me intending to do my regular assignment, but they talked me into doing my own project start to finish. My wife was enthusiastic about me doing it until the teacher told her she had to cut her own fabric. So, we both learned a few things and now we work as a pretty good team. We've started lots of things, but haven't finished many. That's OK though, we are "enjoying the journey."
Darren