Wow! This is a very interesting topic. I haven’t been quilting for long, but I do have a quilt I made sometime in the 70’s. I knew absolutely nothing about quilting, but decided to try my hand. I traced my pattern pieces on a piece of paper and then pinned to my fabric. Cut out with a pair of scissors and sewed them together on an old sewing machine that didn’t work very well. Hand quilted that thing. Every now and then I will take it out of storage and think “I can’t believe what a good job I done having absolutely no knowledge what I was doing. The only thing I wish I would have done differently is tagged the quilt with the year I made it and chose different color of fabric (used red and green). It was a bow tie pattern.