My initial thought was to use family memories, and after discussing the idea with our daughter; it became a problem of what to leave out.

Most of the images were drawn on paper before being transferred to an adhesive web using a light box.   I decided to use colours and fabrics that children would perhaps use in a drawing. The style of the figures started out as stick figures but I then decided they would look better in clothes.  Many of the additional features were drawn directly onto the quilt. Coloured pencils, oil pastels and pen were used for the extra detail.   As I wanted the quilt to look childlike I did not worry about the scale of the

The variety of little pictures on the quilt tell just so many stories of our activities as a family – skiing on Mt Ruapehu, camping and tramping in very remote places, mainly in the South Island, holidaying at our seaside bach (holiday house) at Whangamata in the North Island, and travelling with three children, including a holiday in Australia.

Rabbits – we gave two of our children female rabbits (the younger son had a cage of finches), and on Christmas Day we found that Gretchen needed a name change to Graham, and as a result of the Christmas Day activities nine baby rabbits arrived to join the pets.  We also had three cats and at times two travelled to Whangamata with us.

For the first time I used fusible pellon for the batting, and ironed this to the back of the quilt top, then added one of my hand dyed fabrics as the backing.  This worked very well for a small quilt.

Close Up: