@Lowena well, even coming from a family of them, I didn't really learn from them.
I learned to hand sew from my great grandmother and my grandmother let me use her industrial just enough not to be scared of one. Mom taught me some, but didn't have the patience for it and I don't have the personality to sew slow nor sew on a schedule of what I am supposed to sew. My first thing was a buttoned shirt with a collar.
I learned to sew in HS when I stole my mom's 201 and sewed on the sly to copy a Betsey Johnson dress I couldn't afford, a lot of books and a manager of the fabric department at the five and dime saving me the end cuts and discontinued patterns at a HUGE discount. I did not like how my mom made clothing, and I figured there was another way. There was.
As to quilting, I am not a quilter. I don't like it, and I don't really like the looks of them. That is not to say I can't appreciate the work and artistic beauty of them, because I can. But what I have learned I learned from TreadleOn.
On the machines, my first machine I bought was a Kenmore that did everything. My machines tend to go backwards in tech rather then forwards. For a good number of years, the only machine I owned was a treadle, and I still prefer them to electric ones. The only one at my house is a treadle, and I sew on them at work.