Embroidered World Map, Part 2

Since I first wrote about our coin map project, friends have shared coins from 10 more countries, and I've added 5 coins to our map. Wow! It's been so fun to find out where friends have traveled, and to learn more about each place myself as I try to decide how best to make a simple thread drawing to evoke one aspect of each country.

The girls have also been enjoying watching the progress, reading the notes from friends, sharing their colored pencils for sketching, and sitting on my lap as I sew. This last can make progress slow, although the cuddles are always sweet.

I'm not working in any particular order, mostly stitching on coins as I have inspiration for a picture to stitch around each. So, this week I added coins scattered around the world. First up is this kiwi bird from New Zealand. This was probably the easiest design to settle on - the round body of the bird fit so perfectly around the coin!

This is the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey. I haven't traveled that much internationally yet, but I did spend three weeks in Turkey in college which was an amazing experience, especially as a Classics major! The Hagia Sophia was an Orthodox church, then converted into a mosque with the fall of Constantinople, and now is a museum open to the public.

This is me and Edward Bear in front of the Hagia Sophia. Sorry about the huge palm tree in the way. Edward came to Turkey with me, and I took pictures of him touring the country since I was on a trip with strangers and I didn't want all my pictures to be of people I'd only know for a short time. Edward was a fun unifying element in the photos, and now the girls really enjoy looking through the scrapbooks of his travels!

Just for fun, here's Edward in front of the nearby Istanbul Blue Mosque.

Back to the map now. South and central America are filling up quickly! This is a tortoise for Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands.

For Costa Rica I really wanted to make one of their gorgeously painted ox cart wheels, but after making a sketch or two I had to admit that there simply wasn't room for such a big design. So I did the Blue Morpho Butterfly instead, which I love almost as much. God has created so many amazing vibrant colors in nature!

I think my favorite design to date (maybe tied with the Dutch windmill) is this Mexican sombrero and serape. I was always planning on a sombrero for Mexico, but I came across serapes for sale when I was looking for Mexican fabric to making a baby swing. Right away I knew it would be the perfect motif to add to my Mexican design. It was fun to needle weave such a small scarf!

Zooming out, here's a picture of the whole map, along with the coins that are yet to be sewn on. 11 down, 13 (and counting) to go! Here's the updated list of countries for which we have coins:

1. Argentina
2. Bermuda
3. Belize
4. Bolivia
5. Brazil
6. Canada
7. Chile
8. China
9. Costa Rica
10. Ecuador
11. France
12. Honduras
13. India
14. Mexico
15. Namibia
16. The Netherlands
17. New Zealand
18. Peru
19. The Philippines
20. South Africa
21. Switzerland
22. Turkey
23. The United Kingdom
24. The United States 

If you've sent coins for our project, thank you, thank you, thank you! This project wouldn't be possible without you! I'm hoping to keep posting updates of the map progress every week or two, and I'm looking forward to continuing to share this project with you all.