Map of a celestial journey

Hand stitching rays of sunshine!

It's been a while since my last blog update, stuff gets in the way and I forget to post. At least my Facebook page has been more up to date with some recent photos of the art quilt I've been working on the past couple of months. I'm happy to say that it's finished!!! Many, many, many hours of hand stitching, machine stitching, printing, dyeing and procrastinating has happened to get to the finished design. 

Free machine stitching the lettering.

I'm going to post separately on the progress to the finished article as it's interesting watching the different stages and don't want to lose any of your attention by writing a massive long article!

In the last post, the sun in the centre of the quilt had been started. Rays of sunshine were hand stitched in gold thread using a split stitch and yellow and orange embroidery thread in a running stitch. Do love a bit of hand stitching!

Next up is stitching the text which is taken from a Renaissance map of Copernicus' theory of the Sun being the centre of the universe (which of course was true but until mid 16th century few believed it!). Bit tricky stitching this as you need to move fast to get the right tension so watch out for the fingers.  I'm going for the olde handwritten look of an old map, not perfect modern typography. 

Like hand stitching, free machine stitching (removing the feeder feet under the fabric so you can move the fabric in any direction and stitch length) is very satisfying and feels like drawing with thread. Which is a nice analogy, the needle the nib, the thread the ink!

Next post, the planets and satellites are added.