One of the groups I belong to asked it's members the question - Why do you Quilt?  The answers are far ranging - everything from artistic expression to variations on "It's finally My time" to healing from personal challenges. It's probably a question that will have a different answer for everyone, because everyone's journey is different.  This might be a good time to unearth the time capsule from the mid-80's, and talk about my journey.

I began to quilt when my oldest went off to public school, and I really had time to myself for the first time in a long time - his brother didn't arrive for another couple of years.  I found myself in a quilt shop, and before I knew it I had signed up for a beginners class in quilting, based on a handmade sampler. I unearthed it this morning - the colors make it almost too painful to look at. I'm pretty sure that was the last dark background I used. I don't think it'll need a quilt appraiser to date it - it screams '1980's' to me. Or maybe it's just the voices in my head.

The second quilt I made - shortly after beginning membership in a guild - was this one, that has become my logo on my business card and website. It's also the first of the Challenge quilts - make a star, but nowhere in the rules did it say make a star with 200 pieces...that was my own special type of insanity.

Neither of these pieces have proper names - which seems a little sad. Oh, and there's that beautiful harvest color again - was I decades ahead of Tangerine Tango?

So fast forward a couple of decades, and many quilted pieces, and this is the one that I'm finishing today...

It's actually off my design wall and quilted - I'm off to a doctor's visit and will finish back tacking the binding there.

So now that I've shown you mine, what was your first quilt? Do you still have it? Confession - my first quilt is still intact, but each of my son's first quilts have long since bit the dust.  I had a lot to learn about construction...and more to learn still...