posted 11-01-2013 07:52 AM               

Astronaut sews starry quilt block in space, invites quilters to add more stars

A crafty astronaut has sewn a starry-quilt block aboard the space station, and is inviting others to join her in doing the same.

Karen Nyberg, who is in the final weeks of her five month stay on the International Space Station, recently revealed her handiwork a 9-by-9-inch (23-by-23-cm) red, white and blue square that she stitched together to create what may very well be the first example of quilting in space.

"This is what I've made," Nyberg said while holding up the sewn square in a recorded video released by NASA on Wednesday (Oct. 30). "It is far from being a masterpiece. I've discovered several challenges with cutting and piecing and stitching in weightlessness."

"But it was made in space," she stated.

posted 11-04-2014 12:35 PM               

Astronaut's sewn-in-space star shines at quilt festival

Karen Nyberg was seeing stars.

A NASA astronaut, Nyberg wasn't in space looking out the windows onboard the International Space Station, nor was she outside looking up at the Houston night sky.

In fact, at that moment, Nyberg was inside the George R. Brown Convention Center attending the International Quilt Festival, the largest annual quilt show in the world. But the stars she was seeing were not even the 2,200 star-themed quilt blocks she, herself, had inspired others to sew.

No, the stars she remarked seeing were from the constant stream of camera flashes. Because here, at the center of the worldwide quilting community, she was the star.