Hi there! My name is Olea, I'm 30 years old, I come from Melbourne, Australia, and now I live in Germany.
My mum made clothing and soft toys when I was growing up, and I remember some curtains and patchwork pillows, but not many quilted items. My one grandma is a knitter, and the other was a longtime scout leader, and neither was into sewing all that much. I don't know how I ended up with the quilting bug, but I think it's because I love fabric, and I love the grid-based designs (and how modern quilts play with the "rules").
I travelled a bit as a nanny/au-pair, and spent lots of my money on beautiful Liberty fabrics when I lived in London, and at the local LQS in Seattle. Here in Germany, it's very difficult to find good quality/modern quilting fabric locally. What I can find is expensive, up to 24 euros per metre (which is 25.50USD per yard), so I think buying online from the US or UK is the way to go.
I couldn't tell you the first quilting project I started, but this year, I finally completed my very first quilt. It's all half-square triangles, that I had initially tried to work into a star design, but I'm still learning about lights and darks, so it ended up in this semi-gradient. I picked the turquoise binding mostly to link the front and back fabrics together, but I love how it pops.
I quilted it on my domestic computerised machine with a walking foot, mostly stitch-in-the-ditch, but following different lines to try to give it some variety. I'm debating putting it back in and quilting it more densely to make it more noticeable, but I also want it to stay super soft and cuddly, and I'm afraid of ruining it.
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Because there's no local quilting shops here, there's also no local quilting guild, and I don't know anyone who lives near me that quilts or sews. I could travel to the nearest major city, but I'm not quite fluent in German yet, so I'm very glad to have found this online community
I'm working on a small wall hanging and a bed sized quilt, and dreaming about my next quilty plans, so I should have plenty to post here before long.