At the beginning of 2023, I pulled my grandmother’s sewing machine out of the closet with zero sewing experience and no concept of what it takes to make a quilt. BUT, I was determined.

My cousin was pregnant with the first baby our family line had seen in over a decade. I was thrilled to be the “fun cousin” and was determined to make my gift to this new baby something personal that could last a lifetime. I watched countless hours of YouTube tutorials to figure out where to even start on a sewing machine. It took some patience and enough trial and error to drive someone to drink, but there I was sewing for the first time. I made napkins, sewed some patches on a blanket my grandmother had made me as a kid, and then purchased fabric for the baby quilt. I told myself as I waited for the fabric to arrive if I hated it or I couldn’t get it accomplished, I’d have at least tried.

I made the rookie mistake of designing my own pattern from the get go (newbies, if you are reading this, there are hundreds of free patterns available out there for you, don’t do this…). It was rows of triangles arranged into a row of hexagons. Why? I have no idea, it’s just what I came up with. I started sewing row by row, triangle to triangle, and all of a sudden, I had my first quilt blocks. It was much easier than I expected. It looked far better than it should have, and the process was never stressful. If something didn’t work or didn’t look right, I knew I could take it apart with my handy seam ripper and try again. The process was so void of negativity it was calming, a comfortable escape from the conference calls and task management that is my day job. That’s where this began, on my grandmother’s sewing machine on the side of my desk in my office every day after work.

Quilting very quickly became my “me time”. It replaced reading sci-fi novels and binging reality television. It became my way to wind down after a work day, a way to fill my spare time on the weekends, and my preferred way to give back to myself.