Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Caught between the Moon and New York City . . .


or, more accurately, between the Milky Way and a suburb north of NYC!

I have been working on the Constellation quilt. I have stitched many of the stars, all except those around the outer rim.

The part that has really slowed me down is the band of stars in the Milky Way, all French Knots!

For the past four evenings, I have done nothing but French Knots. I have done hundreds of them! It is very fatiguing to do them through the quilt hoop and template, and, I am sure I will have to re-do many of them. It is hard to see with the template on top.

Here is a photo of the whole quilt so far.

(click on photo to enlarge)
(Whenever I lay out anything on the dining room table, Furry insists on jumping up to see what's going on)!

It is hard to see the progress with the template. You can probably make out the tiny white dots in the middle of the screen. That is perhaps a third of the Milky Way. I have a long way to go!

The construction lines of the quilt are stitched with quilting thread, but I am using DMC Glow-in-the-dark white floss. It looks like regular DMC, but it tends to get fuzzy, especially when it catches on the template. It really does glow in the dark, but I don't know how to show it here in a photo. It needs to be very dark. I am not sure who will be looking at it in the dark, but it's an interesting idea!





French Knots
I think I may need to order more of the Glow-in-the-dark floss. The French Knots eat up a lot of it.

The stars themselves use a very interesting notation system. It was inspired by the system developed in the 1950's by H. A. Rey. Rey was an amateur astronomer, but is probably best known as the author of the Curious George books.

Each star is represented by their visual magnitude (brightness as seen from the planet Earth).
The stars have six  corresponding sizes on a scale of 0 (brightest) to 5 (faintest or smallest).
Each star is stitched using a backstitch. This is how they appear on the quilt.


The quilt is coming along, but I still have a long way to go. I am a little nervous about the big reveal, when I tear off the template. I hope the stitching is not too sloppy. I cannot imagine making a full size quilt. The option is to make x's instead of French Knots. I would definitely do that if I were making the larger quilt!

I do have another finish for 2016. Before I started the quilt, I finished up a pair of socks for Keith's birthday. They are knitted with Kroy sock yarn. I couldn't post them before this, or it would have spoiled the surprise. I hope they fit. Every pair I make fits a little differently. Here they are.


Hope he like them!

I am currently thinking about how I will finish the quilt. I guess it should be hung on a wall. That means I will have to sew quilt hangers on the back. I have never actually done that with a quilt, although I have read about it. Hmmm, another experiment!

That's all I have for now. Enjoy the Spring everyone.

2 comments:

Jeannine520 said...

What a darling helper you have. Can't wait to see it without the template on top.

Margaret said...

Wow! What a lot of work that quilt is! And who knew HA Rey was into astronomy? Very interesting! Looking great! Love the socks for Keith too.