And so it begins...

My memory of making things goes back to middle school, although maybe it was grade school. I do remember that in 1959 I begged my parents for a Barbie doll. Money was tight in those days. We had a chihuahua named Pepe', and really the only person in our family who was really a "pet" person would be my brother, but at this point he was only about a year old. Pepe' was high strung and kind of annoying most of the time, so when my parents said if I agreed to sell Pepe' to a family who would be thrilled to have him, then they would use the money to buy me a Barbie doll. It didn't take long for me to agree.

I loved that Barbie doll. She was the "second edition" Barbie, with the original having a blond ponytail. My Barbie was a redhead with a bubble cut, red because that was the color of my own hair. However, there was little money for many cute store-bought outfits available (although my Barbie did own a very Jackie Kennedy-esque red velvet swing coat with a pillbox hat, and a black cocktail dress with a white portrait collar--very chic).

My grandmother was an excellent seamstress, and while I don't remember many details, I'm pretty sure she was the one who helped me make some of Barbie's fabulous handmade wardrobe--strapless ball gowns (even a fur stole), a three-piece knit ensemble, high-waisted pants, and some cute party dresses.

I went on to learn to make my own clothes, and made most of my wardrobe through the early years of our marriage. Along the way, I learned to knit, crochet, needlepoint, do counted cross stitch, bargello, quilling (the art of rolling thin strips of paper and shaping them into designs), tole painting, china painting and scrapbooking. With each phase, I would become obsessed, and then after several years, the excitement would wane and I would look for something new to do. Mark supported me through each one of these phases, never complaining when new supplies came into the house and took up space.

Finally, I was running out of things to hold my interest. Quilting was part of my Mennonite Brethren heritage. I already had a sewing machine. I already knew how to sew. It seemed like a perfect "next phase."

I asked my dear friend, Dotty Warkentine, if she would teach me how to quilt. She invited me over one afternoon, and sitting at her kitchen table, she drafted a good beginning quilt, a double four patch. She handed me a list of fabric requirements, four different fabrics, and thus began my search for the "perfect" fabrics for my first quilt.

I fell in love with quilting, with the tactile nature of fabric, with the glorious colors and prints, with the endless ideas just waiting to be made from a few basic shapes.

That first quilt, started in 1994, opened up a whole new world for me. I could never have imagined how that first quilt would change my life--that I would be included in two books, that quilts I designed would be published in several magazines, that I would make lifelong friends--not only in real life but also from blogging and social media!!

When I first began quilting, digital photography was not a "thing." So I bought several volumes of Quilter's Registry and began documenting the quilts I made. Adding photos to the registries started making them very bulky.

 As time went along, cameras that used film and having all those pictures processed with double prints of everything faded into the past. Finally, I was firmly entrenched with first, digital cameras, and then finally photographing everything on my iPhone.

I have long wanted an ongoing record of the quilts I make, not only for myself, but for my family. My family has a good supply of quilts made by me, but there are many more in various places.

The first quilts will be documented with pictures of pictures, taken long before I discovered another passion--quilt photography. I will add whatever details I managed to write down at the time.

And so it begins...the record of my quilt journey.