It started with a sketch, of a large coat, that could be mounted to the wall with the fronts open to the back to display all the details in a wall mounted art coat. It also needed to be totally wearable.
Then I set out to make lots of "pre-nuno-felt"... meaning I laid many beds of merino wool roving, covered with fine silk chiffon fabric in many bright colours, sourced from vintage saris. I worked them until the nuno felt was partially felted, but not near hard felted or shrunk at all.... Then I cut house shapes, and roofs, and windows and doors. The village was placed on another bed of merino in the form of a wool batt, and the sky, sunset and evening sky were all worked. The piece was quite huge, big enough to work as the front and back of the coat, from bottom edge to neck.
Here is a close up of a couple of the houses... after fully felting.
And some of the machine free style stitching to add details to the windows and doors.
The last photo is the completed coat (still needing the detailed top stitching). You can see that I have added black sleeves with white stars, and just catch a bit of the collar that is black and curly locks in blue.
More photos to follow, after all the stitching is done, hopefully displayed on the wall, and displayed as fashionable wearable art.