Tell Us About Yourself
My name is Tracy Homer. I graduated from University of Tennessee, Knoxville in December 2023 with a degree in GIS. I currently work for the Software Freedom Conservancy – a non profit organization that focuses on ethical technology and open source license compliance, so I only do mapping in my fun time, not professionally. I also am involved in Knox Makers; Knoxville’s premier non-profit makerspace. I love making things with wood, cloth, metal, code – I like to flit to whatever project strikes my fancy at the time – a Jill of all trades.
Tell us the story behind your map
This map part of a series for an independent class titled Creative Cartography, where I used different mediums to make artistic maps. This map was inspired by a geological map published by the State of TN that shows the wide range of geological ages making up the bedrock of Tennessee. I thought that cross stitch would capture the color contrast in a way that would be more tactile and distinctive than printing on paper. The state portion of the map has 18,301 stitches.
Tell is about the Tools, data, etc., that you used to make the map
I used a usgs geological maps of state lithology to find the ages of the rock formations and generalized them by Geological Period. I then fed the vector file into CStitch, a cross-stitch pattern creation software. After that it was just needle, embroidery floss, and a lot of time.
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