Whilst in my home I use colour, my art tends to be tonal – often quite earthy in its appearance reflecting the raw materials used. When I started making my cardboard quilt, I stuck to muted tones, the colour of cardboard, with just a few subtle pops of colour through text. However, as the project progressed I started to be less selective in the types of cardboard and packaging I used, allowing serendipity to take its course and allowing the work to become more unpredictable and true to the scraps of disregarded materials from which it is made. The first stage is to create blocks by piecing strips of cardboard together. The individual blocks are then cut on angles, creating ‘wonky blocks’. Because the blocks were hand-sewn, every time I cut a block I had to unpick part of it and re-stitch it so that I didn’t cut through the stitches and cause them to unravel. The wonky blocks were then stitched together according to the required size for covering each side of the shelter – adding and removing strips of cardboard accordingly to create an even more random pattern. The cardboard quilt gives an insight into my life during lockdown, in essence, a self portrait. Just as the aluminium can quilt contains the allegories of the people of Newham, the cardboard quilt contains a trace of me both through the physical making of the work and the stories it contains.