Week in Review 2022 – 05/20

A four story pieced townhouse. The walls are a butter yellow with soft blue windows framed by dark blue curtains.
One of several custom townhouses I designed and pieced this week.

It Takes an Artist…

It takes an artist to build a village from fabric. I’m having fun custom designing townhouses to buildup my imaginary Ukrainian village. Each townhouse must take scale and perspective into account. It should play nicely with its neighbors. I hope it has its own personality. The townhouse featured above comes with two dormers and its windows are framed by deep blue curtains.

A whole village of staggered and overlapping townhouses.
The village is coming together.

Can you believe there are 14 buildings so far? The number of pieces per townhouse range from 40 – 130. That’s around 1,000 pieces used to construct doors, windows, sidings and roofs. Bet there are another 500 pieces in the red sky.

It Takes Perseverance

Fifteen hundred pieces and I am approximately at the halfway mark. Now that takes perseverance! How do I stay motivated? I never tire of watching work come together. However, it also helps that I like to vary the routine. Hence, the bespoke townhouses.

A closer view of the village, The light cream walled ones are in the back, with the butter colored ones overlapping and in front.
This is how you might view Bat Sh*t Crazy if you stepped up to the design wall. Note how the lower townhouses overlap with the upper level.

When you walk into a gallery to view art it should be as entrancing from your first distant view across the gallery to when your nose is just a breath from the work. I purposefully chose images for this post that let you walk into my studio, catch a glimpse of Bat Sh*t Crazy and stand in front of it.

It Takes Problem Solving

Now for the nose to quilt view, when you ask how did the artist do that?

One question you might ask is how does she get the lower row of townhouses to overlap with the upper row? When I started Bat Sh*t Crazy I had no idea how I would do this. I could have fused everything. However, I am particular. I prefer clean, pieced lines when the image calls for them. The overlapping junctures couldn’t pieced. Then I thought why not appliqué the edges of the juncture. So, using my favorite blind hem stitch that is precisely what I did. If you look at the lower right section of the picture above, you should be able to make out the little stitch nips it takes to secure the roof to the townhouse above. Oh yes, I turned the seam allowance to the back and ironed it into submission.

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By Gwyned Trefethen

I am an artist who uses fabric, thread and miscellany to create designs gifted to me by my imagination.

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