Crafting Gifts in #NothingNewNovember – The map!

I had been planning to buy my dad some woollen socks for his Christmas gift, or to knit a pair. This being #NothingNewNovember, though, I’m unable to just buy the socks, or even the yarn to make them with. Whilst my stash holds plenty of scraps for a few child-sized pairs, there aren’t any leftovers big enough for adult feet and he’s really not an odd-sock sort of human.

So, back to the drawing board.

One of his great passions in life is ‘maps’. He collects a certain vintage Ordnance Survey collection, and I did consider keeping an eye out for some of those missing from his collection – they’re not new, after all! The issue with this is that I don’t know which he has and which he doesn’t. That being the case, I consulted the all-knowing entity that is Pinterest.

And found some absolutely amazing map embroidery – the crafter had consulted (I presume) the satellite photos available online, and from them,  stitched a beautiful, textured landscape.

I’m not an embroiderer, but as I’d inherited a huge stash of sewing silks I decided to give this a try. It’s also going to help towards my Do Nation ‘All Made Up’ pledge…

First, I turned my laptop brightness up to its highest setting and traced the features of the landscape round my parents’ house onto some paper.

I then took this sheet over to my kids’ light box and used it to trace the image onto a scrap of tablecloth (the rest of which I’d used as quilt backing, last year).

I then slipped the cloth into an ambroidery hoop, inherited from my mother-in-law and proceeded to sew!

I haven’t really done any embroidery since I stitched the trails of the planets on a solar-system sampler in my school years (during which, Pluto was still very much a proud planet!), but I remembered chain stitch so started there…

Finally, I started adding in some colour – French knots for the trees and satin stitch for some of the fields…

Then I stopped.

Don’t get me wront – I’m delighted with how it’s looking so far, but I have some travelling to do next week. And frustratingly, I’m going to have to fly.

Aside from the obvious ‘air travel produces SO much waste’ thing, I’m frustrated by my mode of transport for two reasons:
1. I don’t trust that I’ll be able to take my knitting with me, given that my needles are metallic and very pointy.
2. I am terrified of flying.

So, I’m going to take my embroidery along instead, hoping it will have some sort of magical hypnotic power to take my mind of the impending doom that I fear will befall me whilst locked in a metal box, miles above the earth…

Ahem. I digress.

You’ll have to wait until I get home to see the finished article – I’m really excited to see how it turns out and I hope that it’s given you some ideas for tricky gift recipients. ❤

Are you making any of your gifts this year?

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