Taking seven years to make, Baker began stitching the wool-appliqué quilt in 1876, taking inspiration from illustrations of the solar system found in several astronomy textbooks from the 1860s, as well as from her own viewing of the skies at the original Dearborn Observatory in Chicago. Baker used the quilt as a visual aid for lectures she gave on astronomy in the Iowa towns of West Branch, Moscow, and Lone Tree.........................................
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