Not me! Before the rotary cutter, I was making lots of clothing. Cutting garment patterns with scissors is easy, as you probably know. My interest in quilting just kind of snuck up on me; I'm still a little surprised at how much I enjoy it. When I quit working and didn't need any more clothes was about the same time I got hooked on t.v. quilt shows (lots of good ones) and, consequently, got hooked on quilting. My mother made plain, utilitarian quilts all her adult life, but until I saw those t.v. shows, I never realized what a creative process making a quilt can be.

I did. I made my first quilt by ordering 3" pre-cut squares out of a magazine.

I made a log cabin, a sailboat quilt, and a few quilts of just squares. LOVE rotary cutters! AND MATS!!

I made a Georgia Bonesteel "lap quilting" quilt in the '80's with templates and hand quilting. And had I not soon learned about a rotary cutter and machine quilting, that would have been the LAST quilt I would have done, and I'd have gone back to making clothing! Luckily I got some faster methods and have enjoyed the process of making lots and lots of quilts.

I made a quilt without templates--I did a log cabin. Cut all my strips WOF and started off on it.

quilting has really changed I made many quilts mostly samplers with card board templates several with hand embroidery and also applique they were fun evening projects also went to every quilt show to see how people changed the pattern and finshed now shows are not very interesting for me as they are mostly computer designed and quilted yes quilting has really changed

First quilt was in 1968. A dresden plate cut with scissors, machine stitched the plates together than hand appliqued onto the blocks.
In 1982ish I took a Christmas job in a SoFro fabric store in a mall and the first Olfa rotaty cutters were brought out. There was an emerald green mat - rigid with one smooth side and one pebbly side and no markings. I still have the mat - long ago I cut it in half and use it for glue gun work, small paint projects. I still have that yellow Olfa rotary cutter, too.

Oh.......and I also remember enlarging patterns by drawing a grid on paper grocery bags with ruler and pencil.

Your story sounds like mine. My oldest son (now 42) was an infant when I took my first quilting class. It was all scissors, hand cut templates, hand piecing and handing quilting. I finished a small green and white wall hanging. Don't even know what happened to it.

In the intervening years I worked full time plus but kept collecting fabric, signing up for and dropping out of quilt classes because I was too tired at night to finish them. For the past 3 years I'm taken every available class that I could afford on different techniques. I'm finally getting some UFOs and new quilts finished and have other UFOs in progress.

I'm happily obsessed with my passion for quilting and find it to be relaxing and an easy way do be mindful and focused.

I never even finished my first quilt. Gave it up and about 8 months later discovered rotary cutting and totally got into quilting then.

I did a lot of sewing and quilting before and I still do a lot of cutting with out using my rotary-I love it for all those long cuts that never use to come out all the same width at both ends.