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

This 7 day project comes from prompts within wheesht which is a new book by Kate Davies that I’m thoroughly enjoying reading.

I took 7 b&w photos & wrote 7, 17 syllable poems based on the photo. 
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I found the combination of photos & poems came quickly & easily which meant the ‘assignment’ was a lot of fun and hilarious !
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Nothing quite like laughing at your own jokes hahahaha

mā te wā
​Sal x

*Kate Davies is a knit wear designer & can be found here on Ravelry

All heavy seriousness aside, this month's personal map making class on Creativebug is colourful, light, thought provoking & fun - OMG, so.much.fun. 

e bonds’ daily mixed media Creativebug class celebrates maps in all forms, most importantly, the abstract concepts of map making. 

e’s teaching style is amazing. She ever so gently guides you through a method or technique that is then yours to play with. The most wonderful thing for me is that each day presents a completely new aspect of ‘mapping’ about which I have never thought. It’s brilliant. 

Here in NZ we’re a day ahead & kind of a day behind at the same time.
​Every night, at about 9pm, Hugh & I sit on the couch together & watch the next day’s class which means I go to sleep thinking about it & usually by the morning I’m pretty excited to get my morning routine shizzle out of the way so I can scoot over to the studio & play. ​

I cleared my table deliberately the week before the class started & ironically the work I’ve put to the side is a map of sorts. It’s an extension of our ‘Listening to the Land’ series, it speaks of connection to place, also my leaf litter project & laments the loss of wetlands from the NZ landscape. 
There’s an aspect of this new work, well several aspects actually, which i believe are incredibly significant for us as kaitiaki of this whenua . . . & that’s a story for another day. 

A real positive of this class for me is that it's given me with an idea that is likely to be the basis of my next muka artwork and that for me is the most exciting thing of all !

I’ll keep you posted 
 
Sal xx