I always did crafts as a kid, was a Camp Fire Girl and all that. I was born in 1960, and there was a big push about quilting because of the bicentennial, along with embracing post-hippy life style in terms of reducing/reusing, handcrafted items versus commercially produced.
Anyway, despite from having no quilters in the family, as a Senior in High School (1977-78) I decided I wanted to make a quilt to take to college and so I did. I lived in a small town and mostly I had access to what was at one time a Carnegie Library with a few quilting books, we did have a fabric/quilt store but I was rather intimidated by the little old quilting ladies. Now that I have become one myself, I find we are a pretty awesome group of people and nothing to fear, for the most part anyway... Even back then my mother declared the fabric store as too expensive, and the first quilt was made for less than $20 from fabrics I got from the Montgomery Wards catalog.
I've never been quite sure if "I quilt and therefore I am" or "I am, therefore I quilt". Whichever way it is, it is my chosen form of art. It along with music is a constant in my life. I quilted when I lived in the dorms. One of my first purchases out of the dorms was a then high end sewing machine (pattern cams, right before computers!). I've quilted as a single mother and now as a beloved wife and woohoo! grandma just happened.
I've tried many things throughout the years and by now have a style and a PoV (point of view). Mostly I work in scraps or collections of fabrics, and I believe that while an art that quilting is a craft -- that is, a useful object is my end result. Nothing against textile artists, but my old tagline was something about "it may be three layers stitched together but if you can't wrap a sick baby in it, it's not a quilt."
Started in the days before rotary cutting, loved the rulers and cutters as soon as they came out. Figured out all by myself on that first project that I could get desk blotter sized graph paper and use that to cut multiple layers at one time with big dull scissors! Still good with graph paper but always learning and trying and now use computers and copiers and other technology. At this point in my life, my vision is failing and I'm learning all over again how to do things because I can't do them the way I used to, but I still have plenty of quilting ahead of me even if my best work is behind me.