In July 2022 I followed along with Heidi Parkes' Creativebug class, ‘Story Quilt Top: A Daily Practice in Hand Stitching’. 
It’s a month long class with daily prompts & it was an enormous amount of fun.

Obviously it took me a bit longer than a month & I finished the quilt top sometime in November, chose the backing & the wadding & then decided I wanted to see what happened if I stitched the entire top 😂 
I took my time 😏 & completed the quilt around the 3rd week of January. 
It’s around 95cm & it’s squarish. 
Although it looks kinda stiff with all the stitches it’s amazingly soft & deliciously tactile.
It’s such a cool concept that I’m looking forward to having another reason to make one, although I think I’ll simplify the quilting tho 🤣  

these things i never leave home without
L to R: my dickproof jacket, my taonga pounamu, my 'reflect the haters' sunglasses, my finger print (sense of self)

stitched elements that were just fun shapes to create
​L to R: goddess of the bench top, stitched circles, seaweed shaped elements 

elements left over from other projects
​L to R: hexies, my first quilt, a favourite dress & from practising adding curved shapes to fabric

and finally
L to R: a little mock up of my everyday bag, made from the bag fabric; puffy thingamabobs called yo-yos made from dress fabric & the label from a pair of pants which I never wore because they shrunk so much when I washed them !
I cut them up & saved them for a rainy day lol

The year went by astounding slowly . . .

& simultaneously extremely quickly 

must be getting old

oh, that's right, we are ;)

there are quite a few places now where we can't see anywhere else except here

as if our perimeter is secure 

on a slow wandering sunday i discovering a spot
tucked in behind one of our first plantings
where, if i sit right down & look up
I can see Taranaki in the distance
with only our native trees in the foreground

​as if the whenua is cloaked