Reaching for the Stars

By Warren Bracewell

My wife and my daughter, Amber, are both quilters. Amber wanted to make me a wall hanging for my music room and chose this because she knew how much I loved astronomy. It is very detailed and was a complete surprise.

The quilt is hand quilted and the pattern is from a company called Haptic Lab. It's the Northern Hemisphere pattern and each star symbol is based on the brightness scale of the star. She quilted the stars in yellow, the constellations in silver, and the Milky Way in blue.

The company (Haptic Lab) has patterns/quilts for both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. They sell both patterns and ready-made quilts in both wall hanging and quilt sizes. This is the link to the Haptic Lab website. The ready-made ones do not have the Constellation names on them. She didn't know how many French knots were in the Milky Way, but she said it was a bunch!