Constructing a Fabric "Gingerbread" House

A fabric "gingerbread" house...

For a small item, this project has taken quite a long time, both in my mind in the visualization and planning process and in the "doing" part.

In mid-July, after our real gingerbread house crumbled to pieces, I took out my notebook and started drafting up a fabric version. I completed the initial planning work at the beginning of August and posted about it here at month's end.

I then didn't pick it up again until the last week of September. Oddly enough, it actually felt like "work" that had to be done. I don't often get that feeling about a sewing project, so I was hoping that once I got started again, it would go away.

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Unfortunately, the laborious nature of the first steps did nothing to alleviate my ambivalence. Of course, I refer to the tedious task of cutting fabric and interfacing. 

Cutting: never my favourite part...

For this particular project, not only did I have to cut around the shapes, for the interfacing pieces, I had to cut out the "windows", since it was my intention to wrap the fabric to the other side in those openings and then glue them down.

My process for cutting the window openings...

Peltex was used to stabilize the exterior fabric and Decor Bond for the interior.

Openings cut for the front panel...

Once complete, the two halves are put together with whatever needs to be between them; for example, something see-through for the windows, and – in this case – a fussy cut penguin for the front door.

Two halves of the front door panel...

For the windows, I repurposed a tulle-like material from a gift basket and some scrappy bits of lace.

I glued some "snow" under the window...

The leftover white trim that I showed here in my original post got repurposed as snow under all of the windows (and eventually around the base of the house).

I started the project with the roof. I took a 6.25" x 7" piece of Decor Bond and cut a large piece of the exterior fabric to wrap around it, beveling the corners. (Do this by folding in at the corner first, then fold the adjacent sides inwards.)

By the way, it may seem that the piece of fabric is unnecessarily large; I wanted to ensure that one of the geese was oriented a certain way along the peak of the roof. (I may not have needed this much, but I didn't bother cutting off the excess since this was just a dinner napkin.)

Making the roof panel...

After the Decor Bond was fused into place, I took two pieces of 3" x 7" Peltex and fused them to the underside of the roof panel, leaving a small gap down the middle, for ease of folding the peak.

Note that before adding the Peltex, various trims can be installed along the roof line and fused in between the two layers. I was thinking that eyelash trims, tiny tassels, or mini pom-poms would have been ideal; but alas, I have no such items and wasn't about to buy them.

Las Vegas beads being repurposed...

Instead, what I ended up doing to the roof panel was to add some rivets and some beading. The Mardi Gras style beads (that are glued to the string, so can easily be cut) came from 1990s Fremont Street in Las Vegas.

[For those of you who did the "Vegas thing" back in the day, do you recall when you could go from place to place just collecting freebies? I still have mugs, dice and magnets among my stash of old Vegas souvenirs!]

Rivets applied...

The rivets had a dual purpose. They are decorative, to be sure, but they also keep the two sides of each panel together. (Not so much for the roof, which was fused, but the sides of the house.)

Adding beaded "streamers"...

The beads were added by cutting an "x" shaped hole into the panel (as marked in red in the above picture), which would then allow an end bead to be pushed through to the other side. After cutting the holes, I decided to use the gold beading for the roof panels and used the green segment to decorate the back of the house.

The panels are joined by a wide zigzag stitch, sewn with the panels butted up against each other, side by side, flat. (If you use an appropriately coloured thread, the whiteness of the Peltex will be less evident, although any whiteness can also be interpreted as snow.) The top and bottom edges are also finished with a zigzag stitch.

Oops!!

Of course, I was merrily sewing along and did not notice that one of the side panels was sewn on upside down. If the "snow" trim had not already been glued on, I may have been able to leave it, but as it was, out came the stitch ripper.

View of interior without the roof...

Sewing the last two panels together had to be done just a tad differently. Since they cannot be laid flat against each other at that point, I just stacked them and zigzagged both layers together, keeping a good portion of the stitching off the edge so that it wouldn't be too tight to bend back.

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Oh, I did add one final decoration to the front panel before sewing it all together. See that heart shaped jeweled button near the bottom of the pile in the photo below?

Big ol' dish of buttons...

It has a shank on the back of it, so I cut a slot near the top of the front panel to accommodate placing it into the Peltex. 

All that remained was to go out to the nearest dollar store and pick up a battery operated votive to put inside.

A peek through the window to the interior...

I got a pack of two lights for $1.25. Note that not all battery operated votives are alike. Some require two batteries and some require three. Check what kind are needed and whether or not you can easily get replacements before making a choice. (And of course, you can opt for string lights too; a bundle of them inside would look kind of neat.)

Low light photo showing glow from the battery operated votive...

With a removable roof and everything being collapsible to a flat state, storing this house will not be an issue. 

Stores flat...

While I did not decorate it to the level of our old gingerbread house, it's a charming little Christmas dwelling that will do quite well as a substitute. (By the way, I gradually warmed up to the project as it went on.) 

For those who are truly motivated, several houses in varying sizes would make a nice fabric Christmas village.

'Til next...

P.S. I'm sure many of you in that country to the south have already exercised your civic duty, but if you haven't, please be sure to do so this Tuesday! (I'm crossing my fingers that you wind up on the right side of history!)