Newbie From Purdue

Q: I've just started reading the newsgroup and figured out how to post! I am a graduate student at Purdue Univ. (West Lafayette, Indiana) studying Electrical Engineering. I graduate in May and can't wait to be through with school! I will be going to Austin, TX to start a new job (and conveniently, my boyfriend-of-4-yrs has a new job there as well!). I am relatively new to quilting. I've really only made one...I started it my senior year in highschool and finished it my sophomore year in college (bear's paw). I absolutely love it (maybe it's a first quilt kinda thing). I'll have to take a picture and put it on my web page. Since my time is limited with massive school work, I work on small things like coasters and Christmas tree ornaments. Any sewing I have had to do had to be done on school breaks so I could use my mom's 30-yr-old Singer. But for Christmas, I bought myself a new machine, a Janome MemoryCraft. I am so excited!! But in my flurry of packing up my car to come back to school...it got left behind In my grief I decided to learn how to crochet and made my friends some pot holders. My new project (still in my head) is a queen size quilt for the new bed I am going to buy with my first real paycheck! Is anyone out there a student as well? Or in the Austin, TX area? Everytime I talk onthe phone with the BFand complain how cold it is, he likes to remind me he is still playing golf in Austin!

A: Welcome to the group. I'm from Purdue too. I'm an administrative assistant/academic advisor in the Division of Interdisciplinary Engineering Studies. I belong to Old Tippecanoe Quilt Guild, which meets the 1st and

3rd Tuesday evening of the month at Morton Community Center. We're getting ready for our quilt show in April. I find the best way to find time to quilt is to have a room dedicated to it. That way you can leave everything out and just go in and do some quilting whenever you have a spare 10 or 15 minutes. Of course as a grad student, maybe a take along project would work better. I hear there are quilters in Austin, TX, too. And maybe next fall you'll be able to go to that big quilt show in Houston. (One of my personal dreams.) I don't know if you can see outside right now, but the snow that was predicted is starting to fall. Looks like a perfect quilting day.