The world in your pocket!

At the beginning of October I quoted for a job to make a Map Quilt for a marketing agency.

 I won the job and got some very late nights in return as

 I made a 1m x 1.5m map of 6 of the 7 continents. 

The quilt is scheduled for use in around 20 exhibition venues starting in Glasgow this weekend.  I've no idea where it goes after that but I hope it get well used and 

enjoyed by many visitors.

Each of the continents has a concealed pocket in it for visitors to place notes and messages. This was quite a challenge for the smaller continents but I think they have worked out ok. 

All of the continents were machine buttonhole appliqued to a single background fabric and then lightly quilted around each shape with a simple medium sized  background meander. The concealed pockets were made using a concealed zipper pocket technique ..minus zipper of course before I layered up and quilted.   

To hang the quilt I added a sleeve and ties to give more than one method of fixing 

depending on the venue. 

All in all I really enjoyed making this quilt and asides from the practical challenge

 of making it I learnt a few things about our world too.  

So do you know what the continents are and which is which?  

I was quite surprised looking at the relative size of them. 

I knew Asia was big but it's vast by comparison to Europe and Australia. 

And I didn't know North America had quite so many islands ( and no I didn't include them all, although I did try to include as many of the larger land masses as I could.)   

The buttonhole applique took ages and gave me 'googly' eyes from concentrating so much but I did have a  laugh with my husband who phoned regularly to ask which country I was now in and recommended I give up for the day when I had a thread break in the Urals !

Here are some pics of the quilt in progress