Embroidered World Map - The Beginning

 

Today I get to share with you the beginning of a new collaborative art project that I'm extremely excited about. I've been thinking about this for over a year, and with our focus on geography in kindergarten this year, the time was finally right. 

Here's the project: I'm embroidering a world map, filled with coins from countries all over the world. Each coin will be worked into a little picture that symbolizes something important about the country - it might be a landmark, or a part of the flag, or something the country is particularly known for.

After rummaging around my house, I found coins from 14 countries which you can see laid out on the fabric map above. Six of them are already sewn on, and I have sketches for the other eight. When it's all finished, I'm either going to frame it or stretch it over a frame (the fabric map I'm using is canvas, so it would work well either way), and hang it on an empty wall in our guest room.

Here are a few close-ups of the coins that are finished. Things are already getting a little crowded in Europe. A Dutch windmill, Switzerland's Alps, and France's Eiffel tower all overflow their borders and almost entirely cover Germany.

Canada gets a maple leaf around a maple leaf penny. I was thinking about one of the larger coins since Canada is a pretty big landmass to fill, but Laurel insisted on this combination.

Brazil is represented by a soccer ball.

And the Philippines have the "Three Stars and a Sun" from their flag.

So, here's where the collaboration comes in! I have coins from 14 different countries so far. I've marked all the countries represented in red on the map. As you can see, some areas are pretty well covered, but there are some shockingly large omissions. For example, I don't have a single coin from the continents of Africa or Oceania. And the huge areas of Russia and China are similarly empty.

If you've been to one of these countries and come home with a pocket full of extra change, would you consider sending us one of the coins for our map? You'll get to see it turned into a beautiful picture on our map, as I post progress updates both here on my blog and on Facebook. And, if you're ever in our area, you can come see the map in person once it's framed and hanging on our guest room wall!

Here is the list of countries I have already:

Argentina

Bermuda

Brazil

Canada

Ecuador

France

India

Mexico

The Netherlands

The Philippines

Switzerland

Turkey

The United Kingdom

The United States 

If you'd like to join in by sending a coin our way, leave me a comment here, send me an e-mail at mama.hobbit.arts [at] gmail.com, or message me on Facebook! And for a look at some of the ideas I'm tossing around as well as tutorials on some of the embroidery stitches I'm learning, you can check out my Pinterest board too.

Also, if you're sending a coin and have a special memory from your visit, or a favorite picture you took, I'd love to hear about or see that too. I'm really looking forward to going on this armchair journey around the world with all of you!