“Eclipse” is a quilt for the firstborn of two friends and fellow product designers. His nursery is adorned with imagery of the moon and space, and his parents wanted to fall in love with a concept that was geometric, monochromatic, and dark.

I was inspired by depictions of the Sun’s effect on spacetime, which place the sun at the bottom of a “well” with the planets circling above it. I therefore set 9 planets (Pluto included for some “back in my day” opportunities) upon a torus grid and rotated them to their positions on the baby’s birthday. With each ring of the grid representing half an astronomical unit, the planets are also set to their distance from the Sun on that day. It’s science-ish. Don’t get out your ruler.

I didn’t initially intend to make a quilt of the April 8, 2024 eclipse, but once it was done, there was no denying it. I had never made a baby quilt in black before. I had also never made a whole cloth quilt. The entire design comes purely from the principle of rhythm, achieved with hundreds of French knots. I hope it inspires its recipient as much as it inspired me.