First Steps – A girly banner

Did anyone say only boys can fly to the moon?? Well yes, I know, historically speaking no lady has been there yet, but some amazing women have very well been part of the moon missions and some others have been in space. And if you don’t mind my being cheesy and see the astronaut as a metaphor for any dreams little boys and girls may have, you’ll understand why it was so important to me that my First Steps quilt pattern would be gender-neutral.

So in addition to the navy and red samples on my First Steps pattern cover, I really wanted to make a version featuring a moon girl. And I also wanted to prove (to myself? to the world? not sure…) that the design does not necessarily require a dark night sky to look great. So although black or navy would be the more intuitive choices, I challenged myself to using a light background. With the moon fabric as the starting point I built my palette and because I didn’t want another crib quilt, I used the small 9″ block that’s also included in the pattern and made this banner to hang up in my sewing room.

The proportions of my wall hanging are mostly identical with the crib quilt layout (except for the tip at the bottom and a smaller sky section), just scaled down for the 9″ astronaut block. Here are the dimensions I used for the moon and borders:

With these dimensions, the mini quilt finishes at about 20″ by 25″.

To make my moon girl even more ladylike, I stabilized the face from behind with lightweight interfacing and embroidered red lips (did you see how her lipstick matches the flag?) and some hair.

For my quilting I outlined the astronaut, the flag and the moon by machine with a matching thread, then hand-quilted clam shells onto the moon and stitched little plusses as stars. Oh, and I added some sprinkles to the flag, just because.

I kept the boots and the suit plain as I wanted them to be as poofy as possible. By no means am I an embroidery artist and all the hand stitches I use are very basic. But even simple can be quite beautiful, am I right?! 🙂

To finish the quilt I squared up the top two corners, straightened the sides and cut the bottom to be a 120° point. If you are curious how to achieve perfectly mitered corners on 120° points (or any non-90° angles), here’s a tutorial I wrote for Xanthe from Wife Made last year.

And if you like the rustic hanging solution using a wooden dowel and a corded string, here’s is how I finish my quilt banners.

And now she’s ready to go on my studio wall! 🙂

To all girls of the world: DREAM BIG AND REACH FOR THE STARS!!!