The research question for this thesis arose from the author's desire to find ways to integrate into her sense of Self her personal experience as woman and mother and to be empowered by that. She sought a source of empowerment that affirmed the life honouring, spiritual and ecological values that were being highlighted by the mothering experience. The connection is deepened further by the recognition of a time when these values were incorporated into the earliest of human creation stories, from watching the creative cycles of the seasons, and the bodies of women in the gestating creation cycles. The body which forms the presentation of this thesis is in two media, text and the visual arts. It is expressed and interpreted in three parts: through the texts of the book, 'The wheel of the year : seasons of the soul in quilts' and the research document, and through the visual medium of artquilts in exhibition which symbolise the Old European and Celtic seasonal celebration. The process for construction of this research has been to piece together the fabrics of two women's research groups' life experiences, and the author's own personal reflections on her life and theirs, through the creative process of mothering, patchwork quilting and participating in seasonal ritual / Master of Social Ecology (Hons)