A faithful map of the visible stars of the milky way in the northern and southern hemisphere. The display is unusual, since the sky equator is snaking like a sinus curve through the star chart: Northern and southern hemisphere are visible simultaneously.
As Basis I used an old hand-drawn black-and-white star chart by Fritzius, and I compared the visible stars and magnitudes with NASA material to approximate the coloring for this pearl embroidery. White and blue stars are white and silber pearls, red stars red pearls and the yellow range is rendered with gold pearls. Very dark stars are black or blue.
Star magnitudes lower than 2 have a paillette to show their size. The middle blue area signifies the milky way itself, the slightly darker area around is its light halo.
Hand embroidered on printed (patchwork) cotton fabric; embroidery floss by DMC and MEZ, rochaille pearls by Clover/Prym.
Stunning! Must have taken ages.
I made that one when I was just starting out as an artist. I think I spent two or three months on this. But I still love it, and I worked it into a big wall hanging later.