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The Davy-Hill House began last spring when my dear friend Stephanie asked me to make a tea cozy for her husband. A trade was suggested which I am thrilled about since Steph is an amazing artist.

Last spring I was in a thrift store on my usual rounds when I found a glorious tin full of cut-out felt leaves. They were the first inspiration for the tea cozy. It would have living, growing things on it representing her husband’s green thumb. I stitched the main body using a heavy wool sweater I fulled in the wash, a beautiful dark greenish grey. I added sky and green grass.

Although I don’t often work this way, deciding that the tea cozy would have symbols of Simon seemed natural, since Steph’s own work is symbolic. I created a series of LPs, made to look like flowers growing. The verso would have hops leaves and the tea cozy would have three main themes: music, growing things, and beer making. I did research on hops leaves. I went away on and off all summer. I stalled. For months. For seasons.

This fall, Steph was looking at some of my toilet roll cozies and said she loved the 3-D bits which are mainly houses. I ripped the completed side apart. I reworked the whole cozy into a house-on-the-hill scene, something I have been playing with a lot when making the toilet roll covers. The tea cozy had it’s own challenges and excitement since it is a much larger piece and has two halves.

The tree I dreamt about. I woke in the night two times wondering how I could construct it. It took me a week. It had to have strength yet be flexible enough to allow the cozy to be functional. I eventually used a doll making technique of wrapping wire. Using pipe cleaners for their malleability, I wrapped strips of torn cotton and threads, sewing everything into place. “Creeeeepeeee,” my teenager said before I figured out the foliage. And it was. It looked like a spooky, haunted house tree.

You can’t do individual leaves, just like you can’t draw individual hairs on a person or animal, you have to figure out a way to represent the individual hairs AND the overall shape/ emotion/ expression. Back to the original inspiration for the piece, I dug around to find the little cut-out leaves from the thrift store. They were perfect and I added a cotton print I love for a little variety.

I worked on the background, adding a parts of Steph’s sweater and part of a scarf to represent farmlands, probably biodynamic, definitely organic. On the back I added a river to represent our life’s journey which sometimes takes us past the comforts of home and into the wild and wooly places beyond. There’s a kayak or canoe waiting on the shores for restless beings, curious and excited, fearful and yet still willing. The waters are calm now, but there are ripples of current and movement. The field beyond is fertile with flowers or fruit.

Just beyond is the house. The home leans to one side, it is warm and welcoming, has a big heart, and smoke pours form the chimney evoking images of home & hearth, the smell of baking, the sounds of children, and dogs and woolen blankets by the fire.

Outside the front door, the main path meanders down to the road, where friends and family and community are. The tree towers, blows one way and then another. Generations of young ones have climbed her branches, swung from her limbs, eaten her fruit. Teens have told their secrets, tested boundaries, stolen kisses, carved their names. Her limbs are gnarled with age and used, but she stands strong, her roots are deep.

Tags: applique, felt, handmade, jenhong, saltybean, sew, stitch, tea cozy

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