The Endeavourers’ Reveal Day — Maps
Our online art quilt group, The Endeavourers, picked “maps” as this quarter’s theme. I love looking at maps and I had a lot of ideas for this one, but I finally settled on recreating this old map of London from 1572. Its details make me feel like I could jump in and start strolling the streets down to London Bridge.
London map from 1572.
I chose to focus on just a small part of it where I particularly liked the shapes.
The small section I used for inspiration.
1572 Map of London, recreated in 2023.
To make it, I made large panels of scraps, and cut the shapes out. For the city shapes, I put them on stabilizer and stitched various trims around the edges to outline, and then sewed them to a piece of old muslin. For the fields out in the country, I fused them down, and then stitched around them with a scribbly free-motion stitch.
Scraps for the rural areas.
Initially I thought I would then paint over everything with textile paint as I did on these panels —
Scraps and trims that have been painted with textile paint.
— but it turned out I liked the bright colors of the scraps just as they were.
Detail of the town areas.
At some point I will go back and add some more shapes into the white areas, and I will quilt the pathways with pebbles –taking this picture out in the sun really shows the necessity for that! But I got a late start on this challenge and I ran out of time.
I found this old map (and 174 more!) in the a book called The Map Book, edited by Peter Barber. I also like the book Map Art Lab by Jill K. Berry and Linden McNeilly.
To see more interpretations of our map challenge, please visit The Endeavourers!
Such a neat quilt, even with the late start! I hope you show another photo if you add the pebbles, etc.
I am thinking this piece could do double duty for ScrapHappy so maybe then…. 🙂
Well done!
I too Love maps, have some from when my father did lumber work in the woods of ME/NH and I cannot throw them out! and maps of Scotland when I lived there……probably some of London also. Like your fields and pebbles as in cobblestones will be perfect. Quite the challenge as usual~
Your maps sound interesting; I would not throw them out either! I have picked up old encyclopedias for free, to use in junk journals, but I can never bear to do anything with the maps. They are just too wonderful the way they are.
I really like the bright colours of your scraps. I think this quilt looks great already but it’s nice that it has the potential to embellish at leisure 🙂
What a great way of putting it, I hope I remember that phrase because I really need it — “I am calling it done for now but I left potential for embellishment later.” 🙂
That is incredibly cool – what a great concept for a quilt design and I love the use of scraps of course – awesome!
Thanks, Tierney! I really liked that theme, it gave me lots of ideas.
This is fun! I recently made a map, but yours is much more creative–thanks for the ideas!
Yay! I am happy to give you ideas, because I get so many from you!
Pingback: ScrapHappy May 2023 — Double Dipping | Deep in the Heart of Textiles