Custom Textiles Put the City You Love Right in Your Hands

What is your very favorite place in the world? Is it your home, where you spend your most relaxing moments with loved ones? Is it the place you and your beloved had your first date? Or maybe it’s the small business where you spend all of your days pouring your energy into a project you fully believe in. Wherever it is, we all have a place that makes us smile like no other. Soft Cities is commemorating those places in textiles with their beautiful custom “mapkins.”

Mapkins are cotton napkins custom printed with information from crowd-sourced map site OpenStreetMap. You choose the location close to your heart and the map is centered there, along with a marker that is marked with your choice of text. Comments like “I Was Here” and “I Am Here” are the most common. Three levels of zoom let the buyer choose exactly how much of the surrounding neighborhoods to show.

But don’t expect to find any ordinary Google-style maps on Soft Cities’ site. These are candy colored and jewel toned little works of art with rainbow rivers and personalized locations. These are highly individualized, handmade keepsakes that show what is most important to their owners.

Soft Cities also makes fleece blankets printed with your choice of locations. The snuggly blankets let you wrap your favorite part of your chosen city around yourself, giving a literal twist to the idea of ensconcing yourself in a place you enjoy being. A set of two Mapkins will run you $65 and a set of four is $79. The blankets will set you back $175 – prices that include a custom design process.