village cardigan tutorial

There may a cool spell yet... But, at the very least this cardigan is perfect for the chilly mornings and evenings during spring.

I have a passion for demystifying 'art'. I want to show my inspiration so that you can see how you too can find things that make you happy and then copy the parts you like ;-) As Mason Cooley says," Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation." I'm pretty sure I like the originals more than my version, but at least I can wear something close enough! These next two pictures are my darling darling inspirations!

from here

from here

I had to decide on a coastal village because I couldn't choose which inspiration to go with ;-) 

I photographed my process so that you can follow right along. I give a little more detail about the applique process in this tutorial.

I started with the water by cutting out a piece of Wonder-Under in the size and shape I wanted and then sketched with pencil the divisions between the waves. I was afraid that if I cut the waves apart and ironed them to fabric all at once they would get switched around and it would be a pain to fit them together again. So instead I cut out one wave at a time, ironed it to fabric, cut the wave out of the fabric and then placed it back in it's spot.

Once I finished the water I started on my little hillocks. I laid my Wonder-Under over the area I was going to cover and sketched it out while I could see through the paper exactly what size and shape would work best. It is important to remember lay the paper out with the rough adhesive side up or else everything will be mirror image when you iron your fabric.

Land and sea are ironed on-- now it's is time to add a boat and some homes...

See how I got the boat the right size and shape? It is really great to utilize the transparent nature of the wonder-under.

Adding rick rack ups the cute factor ten fold ;-)

Everything is laid out, now the pieces need to be stitched into place so that they peel off in the wash. I also added some finishing details like button windows, embroidery stitch doors, smoke coming from a chimney, and a tree trunk for those floating green tree tops in between the houses. I did all of that with my machine, but I like to add some hand stitching to give it a handmade presence.

You can see the washable maker I used to draw my clouds and primitive birds.

I stitched along the lines with embroidery floss....and...

Ta Da! All done!

*** a point to note when sewing a lot of woven fabric (i.e.-quilting cotton) onto stretchy knit: enough gaps need to be between the areas of applique to allow for some stretch and give. at first I was going to have my land and water pieces touching each other with no spaces, but luckily I tried it on before I sewed it down and realized that having all the woven fabric took away the stretch and I could no longer button it... it was too tight.***