let's start at the very beginning...

As the song says, it's 'a very good place to start.'

(unless you have writer's block!)

this is a blog for quilting and other things in life as they happen.
I've been 'doing life' now for a good while, and quilting for not quite so long.

my life began in California. I moved to Oregon, thence to Florida, Maryland, and finally for the last 34 years, life has been spent in Virginia. It was in Virginia that i first began quilting and learning about quilts during the 1976 bicentenial.

About that time there was a great push to re-discover the old crafts and ways. Quilting, basket-making, pottery, weaving, woodwork, carving, carpentry, gardening, canning--everything that was done in the early days of our country was being re-learned. "Mother Earth News" and "Organic Gardening" magazines were the main staples, along with "Quilt" magazine which featured traditional patterns and templates.

in those days we quilted a lot of calico and plaid fabric. The favorite colors seemed to be either brown, red, bright yellow, bright blue, navy and green. muslin (bleached or unbleached) was the background (and backing!) fabric of choice. mauve and pale blue were also used together, with some red, white, and blue combinations thrown in for good measure. Most of the quilts then were either machine pieced or hand pieced, but almost all were hand quilted.

Quilting as a craft caught on, and a new quilting magazine came out--American Patchwork & Quilting. We learned about paper piecing, flip and sew, HST's, machine applique, trapunto, batik fabrics, dying fabrics and so much more.

But where to put all these wonderful quilts that were being created! and so the quilt shows began. Quilting guilds began to have quilt shows, the Mancuso Brothers started their shows nationwide, and the quilting trade itself had Quilter's Market shows for quilt shop owners and pattern designers and quilt book publishers, and makers of thread, etc.

and there was little old me in the middle of it all!