I know, I know…it’s been a very long time.

My only excuse – apart from the usual competing demands of life and work and everything else – is that I’ve been busy making this…

It’s a giant (6 foot square) homemade quilt of the night sky, made using a tear-away pattern from here. The pattern was a Christmas gift from my mum, which tells you just how long I have been faffing around making it.  It’s been a labour of love involving the hand-stitching of 350+ seed pearls to make the Milky Way, the embroidery of each constellation with the tiniest needle imaginable, and approximately 68 needle-stick and scissor injuries with substantial areas of lightly quilted blood-spatter as a result.

But still, I love it  …and its new owner loves it even more;

The pattern came like this, in an envelope, and unfolds to create a pin-together pattern.  You choose your material, pin it all together and away you go.

I chose my fabric when we were in Philadelphia in January, trawling the dressmaking and tailoring stores on fabric row for an extra-wide navy blue suiting fabric with a light sheen that could recreate the night sky but be forgiving to work with.  Two layers of fabric sandwich together the quilt batting, and quilt pins hold it all together whilst you begin.  I chose DMC threads for the embroidery, choosing shades of sparkly gold for the stars, a luminescent pearl grey for the lettering and accents of glow-in-the-dark ivory for nighttime magic.

In the gloomy months of winter I made great progress, stitching away in the evenings with the fire roaring and a mug of tea safely at arm’s length.  By February I’d got this far…

…before deciding to unpick all of my lettering and start over more neatly.  Sigh.

I promptly forgot about it through spring and early summer before deciding to take it on holiday with me and EITHER FINISH THE DAMN THING OR ABANDON IT FOREVER.  Reader, I finished it. The one final touch was to add a new constellation to the sky…

So now ’tis done, and Harry and I stand and admire it, and he wears it like a cloak and spins around  like a commander of the planetary system, and every time he does I beam with pride and then wince at the thought of all of those beads gradually falling off one by one and skittering across the floor… so my question to you quilt-gurus and crafters and fellow interiors-fanatics is this;

what on earth shall I do with it now??

Would you hang it on a wall (and if so, any tips)? Or use it as a bedspread or throw?  All ideas welcome!

And for anyone keen to have a go at making a similar quilt, here’s a detailed list of what I used for reference…

• Base fabrics:  double-width navy suiting fabric and medium-weight batting
• Thread:  DMC S712 for the white stitched border, DMC 415 for the lettering, DMC E677 for the stars
• Beading:  4mm ivory pearl beads for the Milky Way.  Czech seed beads in gold for the centre ring and in gold and blue crystal for the four corners supplemented by czech glass 2-hole beads from www.johnbead.com
• Suppliers: I got my beads and thread from Hobbycraft in the UK and also from A C Moore in the US; both supply all of the thread and beads above (it took so long to make that I shopped for suppliers when back and forth for work!)

Happy Friday and have a great weekend… it’s good to be back!