"Re-Newed" to Quilting

  As the title tells you, this is a quilting blog.  If you have no interest in quilting or think it's just something old ladies do, then you may want to move on.  
  But if you're still reading, here's my story.  I am not quite an old lady yet, and when I first began quilting about thirteen years ago, I was most definitely not an old lady.  At that time, quilting became my torrid affair.  My husband and I had no children and he would work long hours, so if I wasn't at work...I was quilting.  When I was at work, I would be thinking about quilting.  To walk into a fabric store or quilting specialty store was a rush.  The smell of the fabric was intoxicating and I couldn't learn enough techniques fast enough to work through all the fabric, books and kits I was buying.  Over a four year period I made numerous quilts of all types and sizes; bed quilts, quilted pillow shams, table runners, place mats, Christmas totes, quilted coasters and purses to name a few.  My very first project was an American flag wall hanging and that was what sucked me in.  
  You see, I never sewed.  My mother never sewed.  Her mother never sewed.  My paternal grandmother made attempts to teach me to sew and crochet to no avail.  I almost flunked out of home economics in the eighth grade.  I was hopeless.  
  One day in 2000, a woman I worked with whose daughter quilted and made beautiful hand-made quilts, was lamenting that she would like to learn to quilt.  She was considering taking a class through our local parks and recreation establishment.  She asked me to take the class with her.  In horror, I replied that I almost failed home ec and I didn't own a sewing machine and I certainly wouldn't know the first thing about how to even turn the darn thing on!  She was relentless--as it happened she had an older machine she no longer used.  She would give it to me and teach me how to use it.  What else could I say? So I cluelessly headed off to the local craft store and bought fabric for an American flag wall hanging that we would make in this class meeting once a week for three weeks.
  In the first class, the teacher taught us how to use a rotary cutter and myriad other things about how to measure, cut and sew strips.  I went home and I tirelessly worked on sewing those little strips together on my borrowed sewing machine until it was completed.  The lady who invited me to the class never finished her wall hanging.  Mine still hangs in the hall near our back door.  And so my journey began taking classes and teaching myself sewing basics and quilting techniques and I loved every minute.
  As it is said, all good things must come to an end and my quilting hobby was no different.  In 2004, my sweet daughter was born and three months later, my sweet mother passed away.  I was a mother with a newborn and no family to help me navigate my way through new motherhood.  
  So for nine years, I would stare at my expensive sewing machine (purchased later to help me fuel my quilting addiction) sitting inside it's expensive sewing cabinet and I would dust it.  I had no time to do anything else with it.  I would stare in the closet at my unused fabric stash and say "one day I'll be back."
  Then one day a couple months ago, my darling girl uttered these amazing words to me: "Mommy, I'd like a sewing machine for Christmas."  
She received her new machine two days ago for her ninth birthday.  In the meantime, I have set up a new quilting studio in my basement that can accommodate two quilters. I am a new quilter all over again, reteaching myself all I learned in my first quilting life, while I teach to another generation and begin a new phase in my own quilting journey.   I have been "re-newed" to quilting....