The Creative Process, II

I managed to get more done on the side of the cabin this morning. So you don't have to hop back to my original post, here's the cabin I'm trying to duplicate albeit in a liberated manner ala Gwen Marston. I got the three window units done last time, so today was all about the side wall of the cabin. First, though, here are a couple more fabrics I bought thinking they might have a place in this quilt. I thought that the middle one might work for the front yard. It was covered with snow when we were there, but I'm thinking of doing it as grass in the quilt. The pine trees on the other three are pretty cool, and there's the cool clouds on those fabrics as well.

The first step this morning was figuring out how big to make the house. That was pretty simple. I measured the window units in the photo along with the fabric ones and figured that I'd multiply all the photo dimensions by approximately 6. I actually looked for red fabric with some thin black lines running through it, thinking that the lines would work for the faint lines between the blanks of siding in the photo. Thinking about how to do those lines again convinced me that the best was was to cut the red fabric into strips, sew the strips back together, and let the seam line act as the faint line between planks. Here's half of my piece of red fabric cut into strips 1.25 inches wide. This will make the planks in the cabin 0.75 inches wide. So I sewed the strips together into units of four strips, since that gave me the width I needed to put above and below the window units. I also made one unit of six strips since that gave me the width I'd decided to put between the windows. Here's a shot with the second window unit about to be added to the first. And here's a shot of the finished side unit. I put the top window in just to show where it will go when I add the second story. I took the leftover units of red strips and cut them up a bit more, and sewed them to the second story window. I also did a strip of white to be the edge of the roof. Before I can put the second story unit together, though, I need to decide on a fabric for the sky. I pulled two blue batiks out of one of my drawers full of batiks (I know; I said "one of") and laid each out with the red side unit and the photograph I'm working from.
As you might have guessed, I'm going with the second blue, which seems almost a perfect match for the blue in the printed photo. I think it will contrast very nicely with the red of the cabin.

I might have kept going, but it was approaching lunchtime and I'd been through Harry Chapin's Portrait Gallery almost twice. The next step will be to figure out what to use for the chimney and the roof so that I can finish the second story unit. Then I'll start thinking about the deck and fence on the left side of the cabin and whether to include the basement windows and wall at the bottom of the side unit.