It has been fun thinking about and writing my quilting history, I hope you like it:

In the 8th grade my mother let my sister and I participate in a sewing course. For quite a while we used to sew our own clothes. But then, during university and working in my own dental practice I did not find the time to sew anymore.

Five years ago, as I followed my Dutch husband to his home country, I picked up sewing again: Curtains, pillow cases and drapes for our new home. And then we needed dog’s blankets… I already knew that something like patchwork exists, so I bought myself a couple of beginner/basic books on this theme. Among these books was a coffee table book by Shizoku Kuroha, and I was extremely fascinated by that; unbelievable pieces of art!!! Sewed by hand! So I started with a dog’s blanket! LOL! With a forty years old sewing machine! LOL!

In those books not much was written about quilting, but one of the things I found was that no matter how a quilt looks, it always can be used. And that was my epiphany!

As the next step I created my Pinterest account and started looking for quilt patterns that I then started trying to quilt (Trial and Error). Normally I always started with a few exercises directly followed up by working on the real quilt… learning by doing, with the biggest help from Angela Waters’ books and videos!

In these starting days I already bought templates for ruler work… And I had to buy a new sewing machine (as the old one got broken), a new machine with a bigger throat. Man, that opened a whole new world for me!

For the last 4 years I’ve been quilting almost every day, and learned that free motion quilting brings me most fun and satisfaction. Hawaiian Quilts have enchanted me from the beginning too, but it took me way longer to start on those, as I’m not the hand sewer at all…

When I found the Pacific Rim Quilt Company's patterns online, it was totally clear that I had to try them! Exactly as the free motion quilting, needle turn gives me Peace, Structure and Satisfaction. It is real ZEN! I love it!I would love to study old, historical design of Hawaiian quilts and then try to work on the bigger Hawaiian Quilts.