And then...

I finished the free motion quilting. I'm very pleased with this stamped and quilted foundation. I pressed it from both sides and was relieved when it seemed to be laying quite flat. Then I measured out the 40x40 required size.
Then I began laying out the freezer paper stencil map. You can see I have the original print out sitting above for reference. Lincoln was helping.
At this point, I felt like South America and Africa were much too close. They were squeezed together to allow full space for Alaska and New Zealand within the 40 inch limit. So I did some trimming and rearranging and ended up with this.
You can see I trimmed the border between Canada and Alaska and overlapped the stencil a bit. I did the same thing with New Zealand, scooting it closer to Australia. I also realized I forgot Madagascar, so I cut out a piece to trace, cut and replace.

None of this rearranging and squeezing would have been necessary if not for the specific size requirements.

Then I filled in some of the open spaces with more freezer paper, lest a stray painted sponge slip over into the uncovered areas. And I started painting.
I love these flat sponge daubers, sometimes called "spouncers." A combination of sponge and pounce, I guess.

I peeled back the stencil to check the contrast of the green on the navy blue. I'm not sure. It's a fine line between too much contrast so it detracts from the rest of the quilt and not enough contrast so you can't tell what it is.
Next Steps:

• Cut out windows, propellers and other plane details. (Confession: Actually, I've already done this, but I didn't want to write a super long post. I'll post that tomorrow.)
• Begin thinking about additional compositional elements.