When I was in middle school and high school, knitting was big. It seemed like every girl had a pair of needles and a ball of yarn tucked away somewhere, ready to whip out whenever there was a moment of down time. Crocheting, too, enjoyed a sudden and perplexing resurgence. I was not a particularly artsy kid. My interests ran more toward tearing around outside, playing tag and pushing the boys into the mud. But even I got caught up in the yarn craze. I wasn’t very good at it. I don’t think I ever managed to knit an even row, or crochet anything that didn’t fall apart if you yanked the wrong string. I’m all right with that, though. I can’t knit, but I sure can quilt.

Quilting was never in vogue with my classmates the way the needle-and-yarn arts were, and when I think about it, it’s not hard to see why. First of all, quilting isn’t exactly portable. You can’t carry it around in your backpack and pull it out in the lunchroom to show off to your friends. Secondly, making even the smallest, simplest quilt involves more planning than most people like to put into anything. And third, there’s the preparation involved. Before you put your first quilt block together, you have to have measured every piece out and cut it exactly. If you rush or make a mistake, you’ll regret it later. So it’s not a surprise that quilting didn’t catch on. I probably never would have gotten into it, if not for my grandmother.

I started working on my first quilt, assisted by my grandmother, when I was 4 years old. My stitches were wide enough to stick your finger through, and more often than not, Grandma had to pick apart my work and tell me to redo it, but smaller this time. She tolerated my often horrendous fabric choices. She showed me how to thread a needle and waited patiently as I struggled to do it on my own. My first quilt was about a foot and a half wide and two feet long, plain patchwork with no discernible design. It’s too small to really do anything with. But I got better.

So far, I’ve made four quilts. My first patchwork affair, followed by an insanely complicated Ohio Star that Grandma and I completed in a frantic four weeks. That quilt was my first lesson in time management and biting off more than you can chew. I was 12. The next quilt, a rail fence pattern done in varying shades of blue batik, was the first quilt I worked on and designed by myself. It took me around four years to complete, because I was in high school and high school kids are busy. When I submitted it to the county fair, I also handed in a pinwheel wall hanging that I’d made when I got bored. The rail fence quilt won first prize. The pinwheel got second, with handwritten admonishments from the judges about taking the time to get my points straight. Another lesson – just because you’re doing something for fun doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it well.

The last quilt, I started the summer before I went to college, and finished the summer after. My grandmother and I labored over it for hours in the hot, sunlit sewing room. I learned a costly lesson in paying attention when I inattentively sewed half the pinwheels together opposite from the others. Grandma and I spent a long time picking out stitches and replacing them. Sometimes it’s worth the time to fix things. Other times, like with the squares I cut too small, it’s better to just move on.

I learned more lessons from quilting than just how to use a variety of sewing machines, how to haggle over fabric, and how to attach 40 feet of binding around the perimeter of a half-done quilt. But I didn’t know it at the time. That’s the thing about lessons and quilts. You don’t know what they’re worth until you need them.