Sew Thinky Thursday

There's a new linky in town and it's Emily's Sew Thinky Thursday! Her debut questions are:

When did you start sewing? Tell us a bit about your sewing history. When did you realize you were really hooked?

In a nutshell:

But since I'm chatty... here's the longer version!

I've owned a sewing machine for quite some time, but never learned how to use it until I found out that I was pregnant that I decided to delve into the world of sewing. It all started with a piggy stuffed animal, and then I discovered the Needle Shop where I took a class on how to make baby blankets. This is the one that I made my son (and apparently even then, I knew that HR fabrics are precious as he's never even used it!-- well, truthfully it got lost back in my fabric stash :)

Then I moved onto to quilting. I had no idea what a quilt top, rotary cutter, or cutting mat were but I was determined to make baby a quilt! Despite my ignorance, I think I had good quilty taste then as the first pattern I selected was by Elizabeth Hartman (It doesn't appear to be for sale anymore)

Then I joined swaps... my first was making a bag for a Sew, Mama, Sew swap. And then sewing seemed to take off... I entered into the world of Flickr (more swaps!!!)

and Project Quilting. This was my first challenge and I scored terribly, but I learned so much from the judges and I think I even went on to "place" at the end of the season :)

I joined a quilt guild and submitted this little project to Generation Q magazine, where it was featured as a play date.

So we can see the momentum was building... but how did I know I was addicted? Well, first I started traveling with quilts to work on their binding (this was a trip to HI!)

And I started to go to quilting retreats (this was with the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild)

and most recently Emily and I hosted a pouch hop-- my first sewing blog hop!

Simply put, I heart sewing! :)

I'm linking up to Emily's Sew Thinky Thursday and hope you do too!