Spoonflower printed out my designs, and the stitching is moving along. I cut the central medallion out of the old composition, and it will work quite nicely on the new faded background:

This background holds all the necessary information, but doesn’t compete visually with the central medallion. Below are the Ebstorf and Hereford maps, in the top corners. I’m just doing a light quilting - enough to hold it together and emphasize the details.

In the bottom 2 corners, the reference information is spelled out in decorative cartouches:

Meanwhile….several weeks ago in a post titled even stranger maps, I showed you this monstrosity:

Which my critique group gently talked me away from, down to this :

This one is also now printed and heavily stitched to several layers of wool (all those ceramic tiles could create sagging if the backing isn’t strong enough)

The stitching on these Where We Live pieces has symbolic importance. On the red piece (on the left) the separate tiles are connected by the stitching. Some groups of tiles are strongly connected, others have almost no connections. The stitching symbolizes our emotional connections. Unconsciously, I was going to use the same style on this map…….which would have been totally wrong!

The individual tiles, each with their own keyhole, represent the deeply polarized, horribly separated state of our country. Stitching them together utterly negates that message. Again, thanks to my critique group for helping me to see the obvious.

The tiles are now glued, then basted, to keep them in place until I firmly sew each one down.

But…. I want to connect them. I want to stitch and wrap and knot them together, to keep stitching until they are all held in a strong, warm net of fibers, until I fix it all and make everything all better. But I can’t.

Ah, well. Stay safe, stay sane, and enjoy whatever version of Thanksgiving you can manage.