Fabric Art is ART
When you visit our store, you’ll see a one-of-a-kind banner celebrating the materials and craft that is the heart of the Woolen Mill Store.
Measuring 8′ x 12′, the banner was designed and created by Pendleton’s Marketing team. The design is based on the Mt Hood graphic on a vintage shirt box, which is also used in our current Born in Oregon logo.
How We Did It – and there’s a video!
The pattern was enlarged onto a full-sized paper pattern using a slide projector.
This pattern was cut apart and used to trace the shape of the mountain and the shoreline.
The sky and lake shape are made from the same fabric – the face and reverse of a wool denim. The 150+ stylized trees were cut from a wide range of plaids, stripes, jacquards, and solid fabric, including our Sunbrella outdoor fabrics.
The richly colored fabrics, all in shades of blue, were appliqued together with a fusible bonding, and then machine quilted with a layer of wool batting and a solid cotton backing fabric. This secured all the fabric layers and created a diamond patterned stitch design over the entire surface. The quilting was done by Nancy at Just Quilting in Portland. You can find her at @justquilting on Instagram.
Once quilted, the layers of needle felted trees and the logo were added on top, and the banner was bound on all sides in felt by store staff. The logo was created using 3-D logo letters wrapped in wool yarn and sewn to the sky area of the banner. Shading on the lake is created with airbrushed fabric paint, the only element not sold at the Woolen Mill Store. The larger trees at the bottom, are created by freehand needle felting.
As Promised…the Video
Here’s a behind-the-scenes movie of the process.
This is a celebration of hand crafting, and a fitting salute to our quality materials and the work that our customers create. Here’s a closer view, and we hope you’ll visit us to see it in person soon.
