Emily's Saturn

Emily is musical. Like most teenagers she listens to music all the time. But unlike most she actually plays the piano. So it was not a big surprise that Emily took a 'music of the spheres' approach to the Time and Space challenge. Holst's Planets was the inspiration for this quilt with a particular focus on the planet Saturn who is considered to be synonymous with Father Time.

Emily created the planet using a combination of bond-a-web and machine applique. I think her depiction of Saturn is very striking. But my favourite part of the quilt is her free-motion machine quilting. She came up with her own design incorporating stars, loops and a many-ringed Saturn. She used a variegated thread, #918 from the King Tut range of Superior Threads. You should be able to see a good close up of this if you click the photo at the top of the post. Emily used this to quilt the area above the planet.

Below the planet, Emily machine quilted a series of Saturn's attributes. Then she quilted a musical phrase from the Symphony in, you guessed it, glow in the dark thread. As you can see, all the kids thought that thread was brilliant. Emily went on to sign and name the quilt again using free-motion quilting and finished off with her unique stars, loops and many-ringed Saturn design. I think this is a fantastic piece of work for a 14 year old!

Being able to move the sewing machine like a pencil, while the quilt sandwich was held steady by the table top frame made this easier for Emily. For this project, Emily and Ben were using a JUKI sewing machine on a SuperQuilter frame. I was surprised how quickly both Ben and Emily became adept at using the machine quilting frame. Emily and Ben are twins. Double the trouble but twice as nice! So I've posted both their quilts on the same day.