Building a Tiny House

 Recently I have done a number of commissions for people after they have seen my tiny fabric houses. While these little houses are purely imaginary, a commission usually requires that I create a miniature version of a real house, which requires much more forethought and planning, plus photographs, to work by, and in one case, enlisting my husband to do a quick architectural drawing to get the proportions right. I still like to allow for whimsy and creativity, though.

Here is an example of one of my imaginary houses, one of the most recent, Little House # 116:

And here is an example of a recent commission of a real cottage called Snug Harbor. It's up on the east coast and the owners wanted a nautical reference.

For my most recent commission I decided to document the process to show the various stages of creation.

Here is the first step based on a photograph I received from the client. At this point it is just abstract shapes against a sky and ground. I estimated this piece to be 8" x 10" upon completion. This is larger than my standard little 5" x 5" houses and allows for more detail.

Adding elements and creating some colour. At this stage it is all fused in place with no stitching.

Lot's of machine stitching will happen first, then the hand embroidery, which is the most time consuming, plus making a quilt 'sandwich' with top layer, batting, and backing, to give it firmness and dimension.

 The blossoms are all french knots and the leaves are all done in  daisy stitch. Edging has been zig zagged.

The background sky had wrinkles and puckers that refused to be ironed out so I decided to stitch the sky in wavy rows to help tame it. The finished work was given a gentle hand wash, the zig zagged edges were tipped in gold paint, and the entire work was mounted on painted canvas ready to hang. I've not really counted the hours it took, as it was an on and off process for about two weeks, but I'm sure it was a lot.

Done, and on to the next one.