Quilting started as an interest: we had a house fire when I was about thirteen, and my mother collected some of the usable scraps from clothes that were waterlogged. Since we were left with almost nothing, our relatives helped out by donating their surplus furniture , clothes, kitchenware, whatever - for us to start all over again. So the two quilts that my mother made came in handy: they were simply strips, wide and narrow, sewn together, with a blanket as batting, and a bedsheet as backing. While she was sewing it in her Singer treadle machine (her first purchase with her first paycheck as a school nurse, in the ‘twenties), I was fascinated how it evolved from scraps into something that was quite magical and colorful. At that time I was also interested in machine knitting with a Japanese-made knitting machine my father bought as a present. And some crochet and tatting work. But as I grew up these craft activities became lesser and lesser due to the demands of time on my school work, and subsequently immigrating from the Philippines to the USA, work, and starting a family.
