Sent by Sarah

Carter and I have been dating for four years. FOUR! How is it possible that I am old enough to have been in a relationship with someone for four years? Craziness I tell you. Anyways, I love him and he is seriously the best.

One thing that is so great about Carter is that we have so much in common- both about big things and little things. For instance we both love to thrift and create. He has made me some awesome gifts over the years and I have made him some things as well. When we talk about our future we have agreed that we want to travel both in and out of the US. I started thinking about the places that we have been together and then a few months ago I saw this. I thought it was awesome and would be a cool way to see where we have been together as well a nice decor piece for our home someday. 

If you are not a sewer or don't have time to hand sew, you could easy paint in the states you've been to or use a fabric marker and color them in. This would go much faster, just make sure to color/paint on some newspaper or cardboard to prevent staining your work surface.

So where we have been*:

Indiana: Where we were both raised and met freshman year of high school in 2008.

Michigan: Our first vacation together with Carter's family in 2011. Not to mention trips to my family's cottage and then to Carter's parents' place in Northern Michigan

Florida: Spring break trip to my grandparent's house in 2012.

Ohio: Where we both go to college. 

Kentucky: Crossing the Ohio River into Newport and Bellevue to thrift and hang out On the Levy. Also a trip to Mammoth Caves.

Missouri: My cousin's wedding, 2014.

*I could have included more states but I felt like it would be cheating to include states that we only drove through or stopped for gas. I also wanted to include only states that we have both been to together. We have both been to Massachusetts, North Carolina, Illinois, and California but not at the same time.

What you'll need:

Fabric- I used linen fabric.

Embroidery hoop- keep in mind the smaller the hoop, the more cramped some states will be.

Embroidery floss/fabric paint/fabric marker

Sewing needle

Transfer pen- available at craft stores in the Embroidery section
Wax Paper

Steps:
Find a picture of the United States and insert it into a word document.

Cut your fabric in a square shape to fit in your embroidery hoop.

Optional: Hem/serge (or just use a zigzag stitch) around your edges to prevent fraying.

Prepare to transfer your map image to the paper. I used this link for help deciding how to transfer my image.

Some supplies

Basically what you do is tape wax paper over the image and then trace the image using your transfer pen. Once this is done, simply take the wax paper with the drawn on side placed facing the fabric and then run an iron over the wax paper so your image is transferred to the fabric like so:

Backwards tracing of the United States minus a few Great Lakes, Alaska, and Hawaii

If you don't flip your image horizontally, when you iron the image to your fabric, your fabric will have display backwards.

Fill in your states either by sewing, painting, or coloring them in.

I found that sewing each state was actually very easy and quick. This project was almost zero cost too. All I needed to buy was the transfer pencils so I am quite pleased with my investment. Also Carter really liked this gift so that's a plus too. :)

Where we have been so far!