*tap tap tap* Is this thing on?

Wow! It's been a hot minute, hasn't it!? My creative life has gone in different directions in the past few years, with stamping and card making taking more and more of a back seat until, well... basically I don't do any paper crafts anymore. I'm still faithfully using (and loving) the Project Life App for our annual "family yearbook," and I haul everything out and try to remember how to scrapbook for a few weeks once a year to make a physical December Daily album. Over the past several years, my creative pursuits have been focused entirely on knitting. It was basically all I did during any moments of downtime, and nearly every evening was spent knitting for hours on end. Then somehow, over the course of 2018 and 2019, I found myself finishing fewer and fewer projects. More and more, my hours were being spent in front of my sewing machine, working on project bags for my Etsy shop, a handful of clothing items for Lyla, a few fun items for myself. During a lot of 2019, and all of 2020 so far, literally the only time I even picked up my knitting was at the weekly knitting night at the library.

At some point during the last year I decided I was going to take up quilting in earnest. I often listen to the American Patchwork & Quilting podcast in the car, and it seems that a common interview question is "When did you start quilting?" or "What was your first quilt?" Every time I hear it, I try to think how I would answer that question. And I honestly have no idea if I even could. I don't remember learning to sew (or learning to knit, for that matter) - It's just something that feels like I've always known the very basics of... but not much more than the very basics. I did take that quilting seminar in middle school with Mrs. Amaru. We traced cardboard squares onto fabric with Sharpies, sandwiched our quilts with cheap, fluffy polyester batting, and tied the layers together. It was fun, but I don't remember learning anything I didn't already know. (In fact, it's likely that I may have been a little bit of a know-it-all during that seminar.) Over the years, I'd made a bunch of quilted things here and there, but I'd never really made a quilt. And even though it happened within the past year, I don't really know when or why I made the decision to focus on quilting - And I can't really point to my first real quilt. But it's become basically my main focus now, and the way I spend nearly all of my "me time." So I decided to resurrect the ol' blog as a way to keep track of my quilting projects. (Tyler says I should find a partner who codes and create a Ravelry for quilters. LOL) So hello to you if you happen to be following along - Although really my intention is to create a record for myself, but I'm happy to have you if you're here. So... here we go!