The third of the transforming events in my journey came in the aftermath of the Bosnian wars from 1992-5. In 1999, a book was published in Germany that showed the work, pieced and quilted, of a group of Bosnian women who had fled the horrors and found sanctuary in Austria. The artistry of these women was being recognised in the international quilting community and I had become aware of what they were achieving through the quilting magazines I was reading. What is amazing about these quilts, apart from their story, is that there had been no Bosnian nor any other regional textile art tradition to provide a foundation for their work.

I bought this German publication with a book token present late in 2008. However, it is only now that their work is having an impact on what I am creating. I should also add that It was around the end of that first decade of the new century that I listened as a therapist to a police client reliving the horror of what he had witnessed as a British soldier with the helpless United Nations forces in Bosnia confronted with the greatest ethnic cleansing since the Second World War. Bosnia became personal at that point.

‘Stairway to Heaven’ by Led Zeppelin played as I let my imagination run free in March 2018.

Vernahte Zeit – Die Bosna Quilt Werkstatt (1999) by Otto Muller Verlag. This has been the seed-bed for so much.