6 days into the instagram #100dayproject, a “quilt as you go “project, inspired by a vintage quilt I bought from The Postroom last year. Having a 100 day deadline and the fact I have to make a block each day means I will have to achieve my target of 81 squares (!) by the 10 July (the remaining 19 days will be spent joining the quilt together and finishing it off !)

I decided to join for a number of reasons:

It forces me to have time out each day to be creative and make something from scratch. I have enjoyed visiting the basket of materials, creating the new design with no preconceptions, allowing the pattern to evolve as I work. Its so easy to be drawn into day to day mundane tasks, and with numerous projects on the go that require a fair amount of time on the computer, its great to have an excuse to escape and make work with my hands

it allows me to have a way to use up a substantial amount of my ‘stash’ of natural dyed fabrics and threads - staying true to my ethos of ‘mottainai’ - a Japanese concept of ‘waste nothing’, valuing each and every precious scrap of cloth and small samples of embroidery thread

i am also embracing the spirit of ‘Boro’ , mending, patching and darning layers of cloth, many of the pieces originating in pre-loved clothing and household textiles. The original concept behind a patchwork quilt was to make a functional textile from scraps of leftover cloth and i have committed to use only what I have, buy nothing new and reuse, recycle and repurpose.

i have also been looking at the images of my work on instagram, considering how i can play with the scale of what I have made, the quilt blocks are approx 27x27cm but looking at the square format on instagram it is easy to imagine them being either really tiny or go large…

I will continue to post to my instagram feed daily.. join me on my journey!