How I came to be a quilter.....

I found an awesome website thru the Etsy forums - http://www.quiltingboard.com/  and today someone started a topic about how you started quilting.  I go back to about 1989, when I hand cut  and hand sewed over 4,000 little hexagons to make a Grandma's Flower Garden quilt. I don't even remember what made me want to do this and I had zero quilting experience. I spent months putting this king-sized top together, then put it in a closet for awhile. Finally, my (former) Mother-in-law quilted it for me. She also hand quilted every bit of it, finishing it in 1991. It is pictured below (but on a queen size bed). I use it every night, it washes great and none of the stitching is coming out.

Never did another thing quilty, until around 2002, when my sister (from St Louis) and I decided to start getting together for a long weekend at least once a year and do a "project". One of these "projects" was to make a memory quilt. Needless to say, we did it, including pictures and quilted them. I was very pleased with how mine turned out, even though the "quilting" is all In The Ditch. What mattered most to me is that I did it all and I finished it. Pictured below too.

When I was a kid, I learned how to knit (don't remember how now). As a young woman I learned to  crochet , sewed my daughter cute little dresses with matching bottoms until she told me, at age 3 or so, that I could stop because she wasn't going to wear them anymore because they had "baby" pants. End of clothes sewing. I made a few basic curtains, valances etc. Then I got hooked on cross stitch, which I loved and did until my eyes couldn't take it anymore. That's pretty much when I started sewing again  and before I knew it,  I had the quilting bug.

Now my stash rivals a quilt shop's stock, and I can't spend enough time in my sewing room. I discovered Etsy as a venue for selling and now have 2 shops. (see links above). The second came about because I can't throw even the smallest scrap of fabric away, and now I also  sell iron-on appliques.

At least my sewing keeps my hand and mind busy. And that's especially important for these long Minnesota winters. That's my story of how I came to be a quilter.
                                         Flower Garden quiltmade 1989-1991

                                                    memory quilt, est. 2002