Quiltingboard Forums - Hello to the Group

Hi, my name is Rexene and I joined the site a couple of weeks ago and am just getting around to introducing myself.

I live in Richland, MI on 13 acres with my husband, Phil. We have two grown children, Colin and Corryn. Growing up, our kids represented every animal barn, except for goats, at the local county fair through 4-H. We are now down to two horses, one cat and one dog.

Since I found this site, I have already learned many things and discovered several beautiful quilts I want to make. Since none of my friends quilt, it is very interesting and enjoyable to hear what all of you are doing and the challenges you come up against. There are many very talented quilters participating!

My first quilting experience was about 30 years ago, when I took a class and made a sampler quilt top all by hand, including all of the borders. Moving ahead many years; when I found out I was losing my job/retiring in 2008, I started taking machine quilting classes. During the first class I made two log cabin quilt tops. I took several other classes and made three or four more quilt tops. None of these are quilted, except for one log cabin, which I had quilted and gave to my daughter for Christmas, 2008. Currently I am making a log cabin quilt in light blue and aqua for my son.

My retirement gift to myself was an HQ16 long arm quilting machine. This was set up and a demo given in August 2008. I did some practicing for about a week. The following week I had surgery for cancer and went through chemo and radiation treatments. I still haven't done any actual quilting on quilt tops because I'm afraid I'm going to make a big mess and ruin the tops. Any suggestions on how to get started on actually quilting a project?