Happy Christmas to one and all!
All the module chaos has now been banished from the living room for the season. Have knitted this little chap below for my grown up son's stocking. He lives in a flat which does not allow pets and he is very fond of black and white cats. Hope he will give him a home as he is a little lopsided and a bit unsteady on his pins. Perhaps I'll come up with a little friend for him before the big day - I'm allowed one pair of knitting needles and a ball of wool!
a.The house and roof is made from fabric paper. I printed pictures and made the paper on muslin coated with diluted PVA. Then cut out bricks and tiles and assembled on handmade paper.
The result - though very cute - did not lend itself to stitchery - it just broke apart with a needle big enough to penetrate the sandwich. I had to think of another way round.
1. This is middle sandwich of the book/panel. It is scrim with pulled threads and two cords stitched to provide the robust decorative joins to enable the pages to fold.
3. This is the front of the middle house. The assembled house and roof was photographed and printed on to ordinary paper which I then crumpled and smoothed many times so that it became fabric-like and added a lot of texture to the images. The house walls are of books and the roof of newspapers. The garden has a path and a pond and the gates at the bottom are wired cord shaped as a double ornamental capital F.
No. 4 is a picture of the whole first page - but the camera colours are not good so I've included separate scans of the pieces for the colour. This is the prototype for each page.
The tiled roof is made from fabric paper I made using computer generated images of newspapers. It has a ridge in blanket stitch with perle cotton.
The house is a piece of hand made paper with applied bricks of fabric paper made from computer images modified in photoshop. The window has little twisted cord bars and dyed knitting ribbon frames. The door is machine embroidered silk with a cord frame.
The garden is on handmade paper with one of my grid samples applied. The garden path is printed handmade paper held down with strips of dyed knitting ribbon over dyed silk waste - edged in the same knitting ribbon and flowers and shrubs added with silk waste and open and closed french knots.
The back of the house is unbricked - not sure whether I don't prefer this - and window and door treatments similar to the front.
A back.garden will be added to make the reverse page.
Each page will follow the same formula - the colourways and garden treatments will be slightly different to reflect the individual nature of the occupants.
Links will be - tiled roof - tiles same size - just different pictures - but tone the same.
bricks with the same colour pointing
window and door in the same place on each house
same garden gates at bottom of the garden for each house
garden path in same place for each house and all diamond pavers.
The front 'page' will have two flower pots in front of the house made of buttons which will have cords coiled around. The cords will uncoil to keep the book closed when it is not a panel.
