Welcome to Mountain View Quilts and my new blog! I don't know about you but I'm a creator, not a writer so this is new to me. Please be patient with me and I promise I will learn how this all works. It's that "old dog, new tricks" thing for this retired lady.
What is Mountain View Quilts all about? I've been an "artist" for about 20 years now. I started my foray into creativity when a friend started
her Stampin' Up business in 2000. At the time I was still working and traveling quite a bit for work (I was an internal auditor for a major insurance company--NOT creative at all!) and making greeting cards sounded like a fun hobby. It used a totally different portion of my brain so I started collecting supplies, stamping my heart out, and even became a Stampin' Up demonstrator myself so I could get the supplies cheaper. From there, creativity exploded! I started teaching on weekends at the local scrapbook store, sold my cards, and even got commissions to make wedding invitations and custom scrapbooks.
Then, after 50 years of growing up and living in the same small town in Central IL, hubby got transferred to the Phoenix area and off we went--leaving all our friends, contacts, and (in my case) my job behind to start over in a climate I had no idea about. If you don't work and don't have kids, living in this area was hard. Everyone had concrete walls around their yards and didn't hang out in the heat so I didn't know anyone. So I started taking some new art classes just to get out and socialize. Enter mixed media--lots of acrylic paint, art journals, and random bits of 3D fodder to make assemblage art. I was having a ball creating, selling, and making a few friends along the way. Then hubby retired......and we moved again....to the mountains of southwest North Carolina. Another huge climate change and leaving all we knew behind.
I found more art classes and workshops at the John C Campbell Folk School and William Holland Lapidary School both nearby as well as retreats (with my friend from AZ) across the country. I made jewelry, made funky 3D art with metal and rusty pieces, did acrylic and watercolor painting, and even dabbled in encaustic and cold wax, all while still collecting lots of different supplies in various mediums. Some might call me a hoarder, I say I'm a collector because you never know when you might need that rusty wire or stencils or thrift store find for a project!
Then the world changed and Covid came into the picture. No more classes, no more traveling to retreats, no more socializing with my artsy friends. And it hit me hard--I was secluded in the mountains with horrible internet service (no video calling!) and no neighbors living nearby that had the same hobbies as I did. I basically stopped creating. My art mojo went away and I had no idea what to do with myself as a creative. So I started perusing the internet (when we had service) and watching YouTube videos to try and get some inspiration. Then I found quilting!! And I haven't looked back since. My poor hoard of art supplies are sitting there, collecting dust.
It's wonderful that we live in a day and age where you can pretty much learn just about anything on the internet. I watched probably hundreds of "how-to" videos and read blogs to learn how to quilt on my very inexpensive Brother sewing machine (that had been used to sew on paper for years!). And I made my very first quilt. It turned out okay. It was square with basic blocks and "in the ditch" quilting and lots
