A Trip Around the Universe
There is a quilt folded on my shelf today, one that first lived in my memory, that I didn't make. My great-grandmother made it—a Trip Around the World, hand stitched, probably thirty to fifty years old by the time it came to me, no larger than a baby blanket in size. I don't know exactly when she began it, or when it made its way to my grandmother or my mother, before it found its way into my hands. I knew that based on the prints and the difference in fading from seam side to front, it had been some time. I also knew it was stitched by hand not just by the stitches I saw, but the needle and thread I found pinned into an unfinished seam and slightly rusted to the fabric.
I know the pattern. The way the color radiates outward from the center in concentric diamonds, square by square, each ring a little different from the last. There's something almost gravitational about it.
Finished my great-grandmother’s Trip Around the World quilt top. This served as part of the inspiration behind my quilt, A Trip Around the World.
In 2022, the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope were released. Among them was a photograph that captivated me: the Cosmic Cliffs of the Carina Nebula. Towering columns of gas and dust rising like mountains with new starlight forming within. The image sparkled in blues and browns, hues only visible through infrared imagery. I kept returning to it, studying its layers, its depth, the way light fell differently across each plane.
At some point, staring at those cliffs, I felt a voyage taking shape; the urge to explore each sparkling star and the worlds that could, and likely do, surround each one.
That was the idea. Not a recreation of the photo, but the feeling of it. The sense of traveling outward, moving through the layers of dust and space, each star brightening in the view. Trip Around the World became A Trip Around the Universe, and the design started pulling itself together the way the best ideas do: insistently, without asking permission.
The construction leaned into curves. I wanted the design to move, not sit flat on a grid. Curves require a different kind of attention than straight seams. You can't rush them, nor can you bully them into place. They have their own logic. I worked through the small templates carefully, building outward, letting each star take its place before committing to the next. It was slow work.
My first version of A Trip Around the Universe in progress on the design wall.
Making the first version was a matter of experimentation using a standard Drunkard's Path template set. It produced more fabric waste on the flat sides than I wanted, and I had all these bits of color measuring a half inch or even three quarters of an inch wide. I collected them in a bowl and didn't have the heart to throw any of it away. Instead, I pieced them together in random order as leaders and enders (small scraps sewn at the start and end of each star to save thread and keep the machine moving) during the making of the main project, with no plan. Until inspiration hit. There was another template set I hadn't tried yet: a double wedding ring. I treated the strip sets as new fabric for making the rings, and a gorgeous wall hanging quilt was made, entirely from the scraps and leftover fabric from the main project. This just goes to show a marvelous work of art is awaiting you in your fabric scraps—you just have to answer.
From the scraps of the first version of A Trip Around the Universe, narrow strips of randomly pieced colors and cutaways became a stunning double wedding ring wall hanging quilt.
When I posted the first finished quilt to Instagram in 2024, I wasn't thinking about what would happen next. I was thinking about the Carina Nebula and my great-grandmother and how strange it is that a hand-stitched quilt from decades ago could lead you somewhere like this.
Then the messages started coming. Dozens of them. Is there a pattern? Will you be releasing this? I need to make this. I read each one carefully, a little stunned. Publishing a pattern had not been the plan. I made this quilt for the quiltiverse—for the same reason I make all of my space themed quilts to see if I could translate something cosmic into cloth. The response told me something I hadn't fully let myself believe yet: that the vision I was building was landing. That other people wanted to take the journey too.
That felt like more than validation. It felt like direction.
I began writing and remaking the quilt in 2025 using six colors instead of five from the first version, mostly to better balance color selections. While I remained true to the browns and blues, I switched to a different fabric collection for solids, giving me the values I truly needed across the light, medium, and dark range. I also produced my own custom template set to reduce on fabric waste and use yardage more efficiently. Initially, they were paper templates, but then had Cut Once Quilts produce a set with a few additional tools to best support stitching and squaring accuracy.
A Trip Around the Universe, final version, features six colors against a background. Photograph was taken outside a space observatory.
I'm so proud of this quilt. It brings me great joy every day I see it nested on the chair in my office. I'm even more proud knowing that many more universes will unfold as others begin their journey in making it.
The pattern for A Trip Around the Universe is available now in my shop.