Included on the map are places visited and written about in the UK by Jane Austen, Louise May Alcott, Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley and others. These are just some of the authors that Craftlit fans have been listening to over the past couple of years, and just a few of the cities referred to in the classics by these authors.
We are also planning on meeting up with other knitters in the UK at various pubs and yarn shops, whiling away our visiting time with our Craftlit neighbors across the pond.
Here is the website that helped me create injet printing of the maps on scrap fabric.
First, I Googled maps for London, ensuring our "home hotel", The Rembrandt, was the center of the map. Then I took a screen shot of the map, downloaded it and placed a few titles on the maps.
Similarly, for the second map used on the reverse side of the tote, Wales in the UK was Googled, with the Cardiff Hyatt as our central point of departure for various tours.
This is what I came up with for each side of the tote:
Fabric was ironed, freezer paper adhered to the fabric, and then the fabric/freezer paper was fed into the ink jet printer.
Then the maps were printed out onto fabric adhered to the freezer paper. After printing, the paper backing was ripped off and discarded.
After splitting open an inexpensive canvas tote bag, the fabric maps were sewn onto the outsides, secured with an applique edging over a corded ribbon for additional glitz.
Behind the map, a border of "foreign coin" fabric was used as a border for the map. After sewing on the maps and borders and ribbon, the tote was sewn back to its original shape.
Step One: Canvas tote scissored down the side
And the finished bag:
One side of the bag
Reverse Side
