Toronto Quilted Map

I created this quilted map for my husband, who is from Toronto. 

I used a Google map screenshot and drew and simplified it in Illustrator. Then I resized it to four panels so I could print them on letter sized paper and tape them together.

Next, after much deliberation, I chose some cute Cotton and Steel fabric (Cookie Book by Kimberly Knight) from my stash. I used two layers of batting because I wanted there to be a lot of depth with the stitching. I pinned it all together with the paper on top, then started quilting. 

Quilting the straight parts was easy. Quilting some of the curvy parts was more challenging because I didn't know I could do free-motion-quilting with my machine.

For the major freeways and subway lines, I used a zig zag stitch. .. which I would later regret. I had to repeat it about four times to make the colors really stand out against the blue.

Once I was done, it came time to remove the paper. I learned a trick from paper piecing to make your stitches small, so the paper is easier to tear. Unfortunately, it got stuck between the zig zag stitches a lot! So I spent a many night hunched over with Netflix as my companion, picking out the paper with tweezers.

Originally, I had used blue thread to sew the streets, but this wasn't showing up, so I did it all again with white thread. The part that took longest (after removing the paper with tweezers) was hiding all the loose threads.

The next to last step was to complete the binding. I used some grey Kona for the backing and folded it over for the binding. Now this map is hanging in my living room and the husband loves it! As does every ex pat from Canada. I think I'm going to do a Seattle map next, with little hearts on all the places I've lived with the husband.