What a great thread to learn of our different stories...much as the quilts themselves must be! I started sewing fabric squares together that my mother, a talented seamstress, had saved. I must have been around eight or nine years old, old enough to use her Singer sewing machine. This was in the Louisiana Bayous years ago. Then my quilting stopped after my marriage and my leaving the area to travel all over the world. As fate would have it, I was in a sewing group in North Africa (Tunisia) that had American women of all ages and talents. One of our oldest and dearest members was sitting in the corner, quietly sewing away. I asked "what are you sewing?" She said she was sewing a pattern called Cathedral Window and offered to teach me.
As others have posted, I was hooked. This marvelous lady even showed me how to make cardboard templates that I used to fussy cut the motifs from my little daughter's clothes. I, too, did not realize how much work was involved, but I did finish that square which hangs as a framed artwork in my now-grown daughter's home.
When I returned to the States, my mother came up to visit and to spend the summer. She brought a quilt top pieced by her oldest sister called Birds in Air. Mom and I hand quilted that top, and I have pictures of us sitting at the drop-down frame doing that hand quilting.
I treasure these memories more than anything...that of Ethel H. who got me restarted and of my own dear mother, enjoying summers with me (no cooking, no housework) just quilting, shopping, and eating.
"The heart hath its own memory, like the mind." --H. W. Longfellow