Funny story.
I am an artist. I majored in illustration but after college I took up painting and did a series of abstracts. I never liked working in "squares" so I made odd shapes out of plywood and painted them.
Fast forward to after having two kids. I was spending a ton of time driving my kids to activities and waiting for them to be done with activities. I was just sitting around wasting my own time while my kids were getting enrichment. (good for the kiddos, not so great for me). I had stopped making art and it was bothering me.
I decided to figure out some kind of art I could do that was portable. This is where the funny story part come in: DH and I were "gaming." He's always been into Dungeons and Dragons type games that you play by making up stories and characters as you go along. Well he made one up based on a book we read together and in the game my character did embroidery. Every time it came up in the game I thought that it sounded like fun.
I decided to learn to embroider to make my art work portable. Problem was, my artwork was usually about 3 or 4 feet high. Anyone who has ever done embroidery knows how long it takes to complete a project a few inches big so I realized if I was going to continue doing what I was doing in fiber instead of paint, I'd have to learn to quilt. That sounded not only impossible (I could hardly sew, though I did have my Mom's machine), but also boring (all those little squares - yawn). I took a class at my LQS and it turns out, I LOVE it. So I guess the rest is history.
P.S. I still take an embroidery project to work on if I have to wait but the quilts are all done on machine now anyway. :?