Thursday, May 5, 2011

Artist Village

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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!

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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.

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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/

10 comments:

Gene Black said...

Your house is very cool! I can just see a little elf living there.

Kathy York said...

Frieda, lovely post about your house! Your photos are wonderful! Thanks for being part of our village!

connie said...

Thank you so much for sharing the photos and the process. I am fascinated with this! This would be a really fun guild project too. I am surprised at the size, I imagined them much smaller. Having said that I had no idea how involved your house was. Thanks for the inspiration!!!

Unknown said...

It is so great to see your house close up with details. I love the copper door!

This is such a fun project, I love seeing each house revealed and hearing the story behind it.

Unknown said...

A house with trilliums! Whats not to love!! Such a wonderful group of houses. Great concept - am really enjoying seeing the whole village.

Alexandra said...

Absolutely exceptional! Your house from the woods is so beautiful. And thank you very much for sharing about this project, it's wonderful to see all the village!

Anonymous said...

I love the little house you did! One of my favorite parts is the copper pieces that you stitched on, as well as the leaves on the roof.

LiberalSprinkles2 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
liberal sprinkles said...

Hi I'm visiting the houses in the village. Yours is so cute, I love the colors and especially the roof!
Grace

Lisa Flowers Ross said...

It's a wonderful house

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