Fabric Map of the USA

You probably haven't noticed, but I've noticed, that the quantity of time I've spent crafting has gone down significantly ever since I started school. I've been crafting when I can, though! Since I just started sewing, I want to make sure I don't forget how to use the sewing machine just after I learned how!

I came across a Scrap Map Tutorial at the blog See Kate Sew, and thought it was the coolest project ever! Some of her tips came in really handy for the project--such as how to print off a poster-size map of the USA and to use the purple heat-n-bond and not the red kind.

 If you look at her project though, you can tell that I made a few modifications. Hers was a wall hanging, but I thought it would be cool to make mine into a pin board so that I could put pins in the places where we've traveled, so I stretched the fabric around a cork bulletin board. I also didn't have enough fabric scraps to use a different fabric for each state...so I repeated some fabrics a few times (Hey, I've only been sewing since June, I haven't bought 50 different pieces of fabric yet! That's probably a good thing.)
 

I only pinned the states where Angel and I have traveled together--all the states we've been to pre-marriage didn't count, for the purposes of the map, I decided. Because when you make the crafts, you make the rules.

I'm very happy with how it turned out, and I'm sorry East coast people, but a project like this really, really makes one appreciate the states like Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah when they are compared to all those tiny, oddly shaped states on the East coast!