Cosmos, Part 3

Welcome back to Part 3 of the story behind Cosmos! Today I’m going to tell you about the machine quilting part of the process.

After I’d assembled the quilt top it was time to consider how I was going to quilt the piece. There was not a straightforward answer, and I decided to let the question about the background simmer while I concentrated on the flowers. I knew I wanted both thick and thin lines in the flowers, because that’s how I like it when I draw with ink on paper, and the question was whether to use only machine stitching (the quicker way) or to use a combination of machine and hand stitching (the slooower way). So I stitched up a couple of samples to help me decide.

See me in action on Instagram

It soon became clear that I preferred a combination of machine and hand stitching. Firstly, because it would take many rounds of machine stitching to achieve the contrast between thick and thin lines that I wanted, which would introduce a risk of puckering. Secondly, because hand stitching brings life into a surface in a way that machine stitching can’t mimic. So I prepared myself for a long-haul.

Even though I was going to hand stitch the stems, I also machine stitched them to stabilise the layers before the handwork. And since the stems were intertwined, there were a lot of starts and stops that couldn’t be avoided. I usually prefer to tie off thread ends and bury the knots inside the quilt, because it looks neater, so there were a lot of thread ends to deal with. In hindsight, though, it would have been wiser to just stitch a few tight anchoring stitches and cut the thread ends, as the anchor points would have been hidden by the hand stitching later. It’s all a learning process.

When the machine stitching on the flowers was finished it was time to get serious about the background.

The thing about quilting the background that had me scratching my head was the stars that were scattered all over the fabric. I didn’t want an overall filling pattern with stitches that would go across the stars. So I needed to come up with something else. Also, I wanted something meaningful that complemented the theme of the quilt. So I thought why not use mathematical symbols or equations for the quilting? I went to the library and got out a book about astronomy and started looking for the right thing. And this ‘thing’ turned out to be Jeans mass.

A nebula is an immense cloud of dust and gas in space, and there is a critical point at which the external pressure on the cloud becomes too high and the cloud collapses, starts to contract and form new stars: Jeans mass or Jeans instability (named after the astronomer James Jeans) describes this state. This was perfect. There were different formulae to choose from and I picked out a few that I felt would work for the quilting.

Again (no surprise here...), it was quite tricky to find a composition that was both practical and pleasing without taking too many creative liberties with the equations. It would have been easier if everything had been set up in neat little rows and not jumping up and down so much. But that’s life in a nutshell, isn’t it?

To help me quilt the equations I used the method of stitching through tissue paper, which is excellent for complicated imagery. With tissue paper you don’t need to transfer any markings to the fabric and the stitching is clean and neat when you remove the paper.

Watch me remove the paper on Instagram. I love this part!

Before you remove the paper, though, you need to secure all your thread ends to protect the stitches. I like to bring all the thread ends to the back of the quilt, tie them and bury the knot inside the quilt.

Watch me bring the thread ends to the back (Instagram)

Watch me tie the threads and bury the knot (Instagram)

Did you hear me sigh? This is not my favourite part...

And after an insane amount of stitching and tying off thread ends, the machine quilting was finally finished!

That was all for Part 3. The next and final part will deal with the hand stitching. I hope to see you again then!