I have loved fabric and thread from the time I was very young and my mother let me play with her bag of fabric scraps. My mom taught me to hand embroider when I was five. At nine, she taught me how to use the sewing machine and how to read a pattern. That’s all it took.
From there I was hooked. I was sewing most of my own clothes by junior high school. My dad gave me my first sewing machine when I was 14 and not long afterward I remember patching a pair of blue jeans by machine appliqueing an owl over the hole and using free motion embroidery to add texture. I didn’t know that it was unusual for a teenager to do this. I just read the directions in my sewing machine’s instruction manual and thought, “I can do that.”
I can’t remember when I was first introduced to quilts. No one in my family quilted, but when I was in high school I collected all my blue and white fabric scraps, cut them into squares, and created a patchwork fabric which I used to make a blouse with a white mandarin collar. I loved that blouse and I wore it regularly. Again, where did the inspiration come from? I don’t really remember. I just knew I liked mixing fabrics together.
![Lion Quilt, 1985 Lion Quilt, 1985](http://mariaelkins.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/ElkinsMaria-Lion1985.jpg)
During the few years I went to college I majored in fiber arts and spent hours absorbing every quilt, fiber art, and historical clothing book I could find. I made my first quilt in 1984 while I was expecting our first daughter. It was a 45” x 60” lion baby quilt in turquoise and lavender. I continued reading quilt books and collecting fabric, but I didn’t make another quilt again until 1991. That quilt was a feathered star with hand appliqué and hand quilting. That experience made me want to create my own patterns.
![In Answer To Prayer by Maria Elkins, 1997 In Answer To Prayer by Maria Elkins, 1997](http://mariaelkins.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/ElkinsMaria-InAnswerToPrayer1997small.jpg)
“In Answer to Prayer” was my first original quilt, begun around 1995 or 1996. It was a sampler of sorts. My husband graciously modeled for me so I could draw the large warrior angel. I did hand appliqué using Charlotte Warr Anderson’s technique to create the angel. I experimented with machine trapunto for the wings. I adapted the watercolor technique for my border. I tried my hand at free motion machine calligraphy. Then I hand quilted it with sliver metallic threads. It sounds simple now, but all this was done in fits and starts over a span of three years. I would try something and then stuff it in a drawer for a while before I attempted the next step. In 1998 I gathered up my courage and entered this quilt into the National Quilting Association 29th Annual Quilt show and I was absolutely dumbfounded when it won an Honorable Mention ribbon!
I have made numerous quilts since then. The quilts I make now are all original designs, although I still mostly design quilts in my mind and collect fabric for my dreams.