Gemm

Hi there,
This seems like a good place to make a first post. :-)
Like others have said, I grew up with Laura Ingalls Wilder and became more interested in quilting the more I encountered it in fiction. My first hands-on experience was at Girl Guide Camp when I was 10 or 11, helping out with what I remember as a folk art style quilt of a camping scene - all the campers on our site got to help stitch one of the motifs on. There wasn't a clear path to the next step in quilting for me - I made a couple of doll-sized quilts out of random shirts, sheets, and dresses that were ready for the rag bag and cobbled together a Hallowe'en costume or two, but it was never anything more than playing with a sewing machine (I don't think a single doll ever slept under one of my quilts). In my early 20s, I went with a friend to a class held at a local quilt shop - how to make a "quillow." It was tied and is still in use on my dog's bed as a pillow only as she scratched the blanket part to shreds over the years. After that, I found myself buying and playing with fabric more and more and slowly building up a collection to draw from. For a few years, I spent some of my free time piecing tops together but really having no idea where to go from there, so I put them away for "later." I think I completed two or three smaller projects. Then life got busy and everything got put away for even later. Now it's much much later and a year and a bit ago I was very happy with myself for keeping at least some of that lovely hoarded fabric safely tucked away. I've been quilting pretty steadily since last March and have six quilts under my belt so far during this pandemic season. Quilting has been one of the best things to come out of a year with so many challenges and I'm looking forward to seeing what I can learn from the discussions here. :-)