Most of my art quilts are an attempt at telling a story, some more successful than others. I collect images of things that appeal, not knowing when, or if, I will use them, or which ones I will put together to create a chapter in the story.

When I have the germ of an idea, or a topic that has come up in a prompt for this site, or something that I am following on the news, or something that is happening in my personal life, I start to put things together to see whether they can reinforce the theme.  The story begins… 

I’m currently working on a couple of quilts of similar style about the same topic.  Maybe the 2 quilts will be a couple of chapters in a story.   Both the quilts are about my recent hip replacement surgery.  The first is named Hairy Legs, an expression of scornful endearment popular when I was in high school, back in the dark ages.  It was the first quilt I worked on after I was back from the surgery and my mind was full of the issues about surgery, rehab, the titanium implant and where my youthful good health and active legs had gone.

The prompt for this round was chosen as The Story and I felt I was already on the journey to document this story of my hip, so the next quilt, to be revealed by the end of September, will be quilt about recovery from a hip replacement.  The name is already evolving, the storyline is “roughed in” and I am currently writing the detail for instalment #2.

Hairy Legs is 920mm X 920mm which is a little small for a Cloth in Common quilt, so I couldn’t use it for this prompt. I guess, when the next one is released, Hairy Legs will be called the Prequel.