Artists' Village House

Kathy York was the catalyst for this project. She asked a number of us to be involved in making our very own artist house to later become an Artist Village. The paragraph below explains her ideas and how she got the rest of us involved. Please check it out.

Artist Village Project
Join us for a tour of our village!! We will be having a blog tour to show you the fiber art houses made by all the participating artists in our village. See the schedule below.

This project began last summer. I was inspired by Judy Perez and the 3D houses she had made. I thought it would be an interesting project to see how different artists would interpret the challenge to make a 3D house. And as I thought about the inspiration and support I have received from others, it seemed the perfect fit to make a collaborative project and build a village. It reminded me of the old adage..."it takes a village to raise a child".
Each participant was asked to make a 3D fiber art house or houses using any techniques, but to include quilting in some aspect of their house. I asked participants to attempt to make a house that would fold flat for shipping, but slightly less than half of the houses fold flat. What can I say? Art doesn't conform well to rules. I personally was not able to make mine flat...it just didn't turn out that way! Please join us for a close up tour of the houses. Be prepared to be amazed and inspired by this wonderful collection of visual treats!
Kathy
p.s. Not all of our artists are bloggers. For the indicated artists below, the link will take you to their website to see their work!

Susan Else (website) May 2

Frances Holiday Alford May 3

Pamela Allen (website) May 4

Frieda Anderson May 5

Lisa Call May 6

Jane Davila May 9

Naomi Adams May 10

Jamie Fingal May 11

Barb Forrister May 12

Vickie Hallmark May 13

Connie Hudson May 16

Leslie Jenison May 17

Sherri McCauley May 18

Judy Perez May 19

Melanie Testa May 20

Laura Wasilowski May 23

Kathy York May 24

Artists' Village House

This is the front of the finished house. The roof is felted with various yarns some of which I dyed to get the variation in color that I was wanting to see.

When I was asked to participate in this project I was so excited. Then reality set in! How in the world do I do this and can I really make this work. A 3-D house with fabric and it's suppose to stand up by itself!
A vision of a beautiful butterfly kept popping into my head and so I decided to draw and paint a butterfly. After scaling it out I worked on PDF cotton and used Stewart Gill paints to get the depth of colors that I wanted for my butterfly. I then knitted some very garish neon lime green yarn, cut it up added my hand dyed wool roving and felted them to make the grass that the butterfly has landed on. And this became my roof!
Everything that came next was an afterthought! I loved the roof so much that I didn't want to finish the project....which is what happens to a lot of my stuff. But after procrastinating, I finally decided that the walls needed to be hand painted with windows and vines and little tiny flowers that have dimension that are totally out of scale with the butterfly. I still wanted that roof to be the only thing people noticed! After I turned it over to Kathy York I came up with so many other ways I could have made the walls....but too late. When I get it back I'm going to rework it, using the butterfly roof but take it to the next step in fantasy land!