Globe

I'm happy to report that the globe project has come along swimmingly! Ok, ok, there have been a few hiccups, but let me walk you through the highlights:

Almost every time I sew something from a pattern, I end using the pattern as a guide, but adding my own flair and adjustments to make it my own; this project was no exception.

The first step was to make a sort of “globe form” out of canvas – similar to the idea of a pillow form you would put inside a decorative cover. So to make the form I followed the directions and cut out a series of small wedges.

I carefully sewed them together and got a hemisphere (the directions, of course, expected hand sewing – I cheated and used my machine. So much faster!) :

Sew the two hemispheres together and you've got a globe form. So cute!

With the base finished it was time to turn to the real work of making the decorative cover. To start, I cut the same size wedges out of the exterior fabric. The directions called for white silk (for the sake of historical accuracy, I assume), but I found some pretty blue dupioni silk at the fabric store and decided to go with that instead. But before I could sew the wedges together, I had to use a lightbox and a pencil to trace the shape of the landforms onto the silk.

Once I sewed the pieces together, all the pencil marks (miraculously) matched up and made up all the land masses. The next step was to embroider over all the lines.

Again, I differed from the color recommendations and went with a classic green = land color scheme.

Embroidering the globe was easy, though time consuming. I will admit a bit of a disaster struck when the seams of the silk starting pulling apart (it’s such a delicate fabric), so I had to pause and apply Fray Check to every seam. No pictures of that mess.

Once all the land was embroidered it was time to pop the canvas form inside the cover, sew it up, and tackle the latitude/longitude lines. By carefully measuring and placing pins as markers, I sewed the grid. The directions were surprisingly thorough, and even called for the Tropics of Cancer & Capricorn, the Arctic and Antarctic Circles, and the Ecliptic line.

The finished product – I love it!

I actually made two globes in slightly different color schemes. The one above has white latitude & longitude lines; I'm keeping that one for myself. This other one has a grey grid:

If you think it's as irresistibly adorable as I do, you can buy it here.