Armillary Sphere - Lesson 1, 2 & (some of) 3

If you remember Cynthia Jackson's Mariner's compass, I mentioned it was part of a trilogy and my hope I would be able to stitch the remaining two the design. The time was now (or July to be more precise). The second piece is the Armillary Sphere. It's another goldwork design with three dimensional components. There are no moving parts this time but still lots of finicky stitching.

We got our kits well ahead of class. This one has a bit more materials than the compass, including two different plate thicknesses. Lessons were released every Saturday for 6 weeks, which was at a much faster pace than the compass.

The first step is transferring the design lines onto the ground fabric. We used the same method as the compass. It takes a bit of time but well worth the effort to do well.

For lesson one, we only had to do the transfer and stitch the center of the sphere. Not too bad for homework.

Lesson two had a bit more stitching in it. A lot of stitching actually. The first step didn't take long to do, couching down the purl pearl.

The second step, which is that zig zag of plate took much longer as it requires some manipulation.

Here's a short video showing how I manipulated the plate. I wanted to make sure that the angle of each bend was the same to give the zig zag a uniform look.

(click on the post to see the video below)

This was done twice.

It took a long time but the next part took FOREVER! It was most likely tied to my mood in August but I really had a hard time getting through this part...

On top of the wave of plate, we have another wave of couched passing. I must admit it looks very pretty once it's done.

The final step is stitching 6 out of the 12 zodiac signs. The placement of the signs is up to us and it won't be exactly accurate as one of the band should be stitched with the signs inverted, but meh. As I would like to have my sign at the front, I'm stitching them in the order below. This way means I can get 5 out of 6 of my family's signs at the front with dad's showing at the back. Sorry Dad.

• ground fabric: Libra, Scorpio (Dad's), Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces
• 3d piece: Aries (my sign), Taurus, Gemini (Mom's), Cancel (sister's), Leo (sister's), Virgo (brother's)

We're meant to do the stitching for this free hand but that doesn't work for me. I printed out the page with the zodiac signs and resized it to 30% of the original so they would fit in the space available. I then made holes using an awl at strategic points. These points will be where my needle will come out or come down in.

Using the holes as a guide, I used a chalk pencil to mark my fabric. The signs were then stitched with passing thread.

The final touch is some random squiggles to fill in the empty space. I still need to plunge the dangling passing thread, but I want to put in that outside circle first to make sure I can plunge it right at the edge.

I haven't totaled how much time this all took, but I get to do this a second time on the 3d piece *sigh*. But that's not for now, I have other parts I can work on until then.