I started quilting in 1996, when I was seventeen. The first thing I made was a little pillow, then a baby quilt- both with scissors, pencil, and little cardboard templates.
Then I took a watercolor class- hand-pieced together a large wall-hanging top (which is still sitting in a UFO box, waiting for me to figure out how to finish it off.) All those little bitty squares were pre-cut for me, thank goodness, but I still had to mark them.
I remember taking a class on "precision piecing" at a quilt show when I was 18, my first time using a rotary cutter. I am such a perfectionist, I kept ripping out everything I sewed together. I think I got a couple of little strips of flying geese sewn together, everyone else had most of a wall-hanging finished by the end of the class, lol!
I still have another old UFO from way back then, as well. It will never get finished because I barely started it- just a string of handpieced little blocks sewn together- but I have them all together in a little memento box along with the cardboard templates I'd made to cut them out.
I'm only thirty-two, but even since I've started quilting there are sooo many new shortcuts!