Earthquake on Third Street

Our little fiber art group started this project several months ago. Someone came up with the idea of doing a sliced quilt; you know, where you take an image, dissect it, and each person does a section. We wanted for the final image to depict the area that we live in and be recognizable as Humboldt County.
There is a street in the Old Town section of Eureka, CA, that has a row of houses built in the late 19th century. All of the houses were relocated there by the state when a plan was enacted to reroute Highway 101 and bypass the city. These lovely old homes would have been demolished in the process, but thank goodness they were saved. They now house several small businesses.

I will give you a brief rundown of how this project materialized. First, Ruthanne Rocha and Nancy Branch photographed the houses individually. Then, Ruthanne used a filter in Photoshop to convert the photos to line drawings. Next, the images were pasted next to one another, and another effect was applied to disort the image and create the wavy curves.
We had the image enlarged to 70"wide x 36" high and then cut it into 5 sections. Each person got a section, and we began building our houses. None of us had ever done anything like this before, so it was quite challenging. I think one of the most difficult aspects was that with the distortion of the images, there was not a rational, relatable perspective.


My house while under construction, appx. 20"high x 12"wide.

So, for the most part we made the houses in sections on a stabilizer base using hand appliqué. We each strip pieced a background, quilted it, and appliqued our house on. Now we are sewing the sections together, and then Patty Demant will work her magic by adding embellishments in the form of flowers, shrubs, and trees to complete the piece and tie everything together.

I am always trying to zoom in to see the detail work, s here is a close-up for anyone else who is interested.

 

The trim on the house was made by cutting bias strips, pressing them over freezer paper, and then adding the detail with an Identipen.

Note: The name, Earthquake on Third Street, was prompted by the fact that we live in an area that is especially earthquake prone.