All about “Astral Muse”

Oh my goodness, 2 months since my last post!

Well, I have been busy, not a lot of sewing, though. Today I am sharing with you some images of my quilt Astral Muse, which is a depiction of the western zodiac. I had fun making the individual images. Each has a painted background, and each sign is free motion embroidered. On some of them I have used whip stitch, which was really fun, basically bringing the bobbin thread up to the surface and stitching very tiny stitches. It gives a lovely effect and I used it for the woolly effect on the sheep and for the curly haired babes of gemini. Each sign was appliqued onto the background
piece after stitching. The dark blue background

has sheer fabrics applied and also metallic threads couched down, all radiating outwards. The sun and moon were painted with metallic fabric paints, then their facial details stitched in.

This piece goes to show that with just straight stitch, you can achieve amazing things with your sewing machine, you certainly don’t need expensive computerised embroidery equipment to gain great effects.