Walks in the Woods - Art Quilts: houses

Showing posts with label houses. Show all posts

Monday, September 19, 2011

The Alpenhof B&B and George Nakashima

I just returned from working outside Philadelphia. While I was there doing workshops and lectures for three guilds, the guilds housed me in a very special place, a B&B called the Alpenhof. I have provided a link for you to see for yourself how wonderful this B&B is. I hope you will click on the link and look at the pictures on their site to get a feel of this place. The house itself is a refurbished 300 year old stone barn that was saved from destruction in the 1960’s. It was turned into a family residence and lived in these past 50 years by the same family. The youngest son of the family is now running it as a B&B. I have had a relaxed and rejuvenating time here. Not only is my room great, but breakfast has been wonderful and the gardens around the house are lovely. The owner was a fanatical gardener and there are many special places to sit and enjoy the views.

One of the many fantastic things about this B&B is that there are several pieces of furniture by the famed artist George Nakashima. When I was in DC several years ago I viewed an exhibition of his work at the Renwick Galleries. It was exciting for me to actually sit in some of his chairs and eat breakfast at a table made by him. Living with art can be so rewarding. Please go to his website and view his extraordinary furniture. You will be treated visually as well as spiritually.

Conoid dining table

I feel very lucky that I have a job that I love and that also feeds me as an artist. Not only do I get to meet new and interesting people all the time but I am inspired and rewarded by what I do.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Artist Village

10 comments

Kathy York had a great idea for an entry into Tactile Architecture. So she contacted some of her friends to help out.The idea was to create an artist village with three dimensional stitched houses. A group of us put on our thimbles and started stitching away.

Mine is the little one under the tree to the left.

I call my little house “Woodland Cottage”. It seemed like a natural to me.

I don’t really have any process pictures, but here is my finished house. It is about 12” tall and about 8” wide. I used my hand dyed fabric, the stuff I call “wicked” fabric for the base of the house.

I love the trilliums that bloom in the spring in my little woods and decided to add them around the bottom of my woodland cottage.

I fused the “wicked” fabric and wrapped the fused fabric on top of the shape of the house cut out from TimTex. This was all fused to the TimTex. The Trilliums circle the whole house.

I fuse appliqued them to the fabric and then machine quilted them through the fabric and TimTex in 30 weight rayon thread.

Once I had all the Trilliums quilted, I quilted the base of the house also in #30 rayon in a pattern I call “tree bark”. It reminds me of the way tree bark looks on.

We had to make our houses so that they could be shipped flat, so the roof and the chimney all come off the house and can lay down flat.

The house, the roof, and the chimney are attached with velcro.

The roof tiles are two fabrics fused together.

I cut out white oak leaves from the two fused fabrics that then form an overlapping design on top of “wicked” fabrics fused to the timtex for the roof.

I machine quilted down the center of each layer of leaves with #30 rayon thread right through all the layers of fabric and TimTex

And while it is hard to tell the leaves gradate from dark to light. I used my gradation Forest Floor as the top fabric for the leaf tiles.

I have a good friend who makes jewelry,her business is called Of Nature and each item that "Of Nature" completes consists of an actual piece of nature covered in copper. I had her use this process to cover the doors and windows that I made out of leaves, twigs and acorns. I think they look FABULOUS!

I had a bit of a dilemma when it came to attaching the windows and doors, but I eventually drilled holes in them and sewed them to the house.

You can view the rest of the village by following along the time line on the schedule below. I hope you have enjoyed this peek into my process of creating “Woodland Cottage”.

Susan Else (website) May 2 http://www.susanelse.com/

Frances Holliday Alford May 3 http://www.franceshollidayalford.com/weblog/

Pamela Allen (website) May 4 http://pamelart.homestead.com/titlepage.html

Frieda Anderson May 5 http://friestyle.blogspot.com/

Lisa Call May 6 http://blog.lisacall.com/

Jane Davila May 9 http://janedavila.blogspot.com/

Naomi Adams May 10 http://killerbeedesigns.com/blog1/

Jamie Fingal May 11 http://jamiefingaldesigns.blogspot.com/

Barb Forrister May 12 http://www.freespiritartstudio.blogspot.com/

Vickie Hallmark May 13 http://fiberartglass.blogspot.com/

Connie Hudson May 16 http://beyondtherail2010.blogspot.com/

Leslie Jenison May 17 http://leslietuckerjenison.blogspot.com/

Sherri McCauley May 18 http://sherrilipmanmccauley.blogspot.com/

Judy Perez May 19 http://judyperez.blogspot.com/

Melanie Testa May 20 http://www.melanietesta.com/mtype/

Laura Wasilowski May 23 http://artfabrik.blogspot.com/

Kathy York May 24 http://aquamoonartquilts.blogspot.com/

Sunday, May 1, 2011