Craft - Map of Australia

On Australia Day I was reflecting that I haven't done an Australian themed craft for a long time.  Many years ago I saw a lovely cross stitch pattern of 'Advance Australia Fair' that I was determined to do in the future. But now we are in the future my eyesight and my patience isn't as good as it once was. Big projects like that will never get finished so I set out to find a small project that was full of colour and quick.

I couldn't find anything suitable so I made this up as I went.  I got out my old school Atlas and photocopied a suitable map. I had to play around with the enlargement/shrinkage buttons to get it to the right size for my hoop. I probably should have shrunk it down a little further but it still looks ok.

 As I was doing this at night, my eyesight would have struggled to trace the image in the traditional manner. Normally you would place the fabric on top of the pattern and trace the shape. But as I was using a photocopy anyway, I just cut cut the template and placed it on top of the fabric and traced the outline with a water soluble fabric marker.

 When I was finished with the outer outline, I just cut up the map and traced the borders of each state.

I have a heaps of DMC threads from when I would cross stitch. I have them all sorted into numerical order in various craft boxes. I also have one box that holds random unknown threads or small leftovers from old projects. I just grabbed out several colours I like from that box. I used 2 threads as I was working on this project. I started with QLD and NT and did shorter rows. I am unhappy with how this looked so for the rest of the states I did one continuous line across from border to border.

Now somehow while I was working on the project I must have pulled the fabric in the frame and distorted the lines. Some of the borders then ended up wonky when I started to embroider.  Hopefully no one notices.

After I finished I trimmed the extra fabric at the back and it was done. I think I might do a kangaroo next or maybe some of our bright colourful bird life. If you have any ideas or seen any easy patterns then please let me know.