Meet the artist knitting life-sized replica of her grandma’s house

A giant knitted house that visitors can step into at Parr Hall is to become one of the showstoppers at this year’s Warrington Arts Festival.

Chapelford artist Marie Jones has spent more than six months painstakingly creating a life-sized replica of her grandmother’s home in Great Sankey after a year of intense planning.

Made entirely from neon green and white acrylic yarn and held up by a frame, the 7m-tall ‘Grandma’s House’ will float down from the rigging at Parr Hall for a vivid exploration of home, memory and family bonds.

Opening on Sunday, 20 July, and running for a week until 26 July, the immersive experience will give people the chance to walk through the front door and enter the rooms most used by Marie’s grandma, Margaret Robinson.

From the brickwork outside to the furniture and items around the interior, every detail of the house is in the process of being meticulously recreated using digitally hacked Brother KH950i knitting machines.

Marie said: “People thought I was a bit mad at first when I told them about this project, but it’s something I’ve wanted to do for so long. I’ve been thinking and talking about it since at least 2019.

“It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where and when it began but since we moved to Chapelford, I’ve always been amazed at how similar all of the houses look. We all have the same trees and bushes. They sort of imprint onto your mind.

“It reminded me of the first largescale knit I made in 2014 when I was doing my degree, but this will be even bigger and more technically challenging.”

The knitted house symbolises not only an act of devotion and labour but a material reflection of the quiet spectacle of domestic life.

For Marie, it is also manifestation of her relationship with her grandma Margaret, who is now 86. Since she was about four years old, the house has been a constant presence in her life – a place of love and comfort as well as a growing patchwork of memories.

The installation captures a moment in time too with the acknowledgement that the places we hold dear are temporary. One day, Grandma’s House will belong to another family.

In that sense, Marie hopes visitors will bring their own experiences, associations and interpretations to the installation to think about what ‘home’ means to them.

Marie, one of arts charity Culture Warrington’s Associate Artists and a former winner of the Open Exhibition, added: “My sister and I would come and stay at grandma’s each year during the summer holidays. It was really exciting to come and stay as we grew up in a very rural area in the north of Anglesey.

“It felt very alive and awake at night to be there as there were no streetlights where we lived, just the moonlight. It feels strange to think that one day it will be the last time I step foot in there.”

It’s a very personal project but also a very ambitious one – so to make it possible Marie was assisted by 113 people at a series of workshops at Warrington Museum.

From knitting enthusiasts to beginners, who fancied trying something new, the community rallied around with the age of volunteers ranging from two to 80-plus. They will all be given special thanks for their contribution at a launch event in July.

Marie said: “It was so fantastic. I really wanted people to feel connected to the artwork by being able to come and knit some of it for themselves. Seeing people return over three weekends to do more was such a lovely surprise.

“One young boy went home to tell his grandma that he was an artist and had knitted a house that was going in an exhibition!”

Margaret, a former lifeguard, has also been helping to knit the panels together.

She said: “I was quite surprised when Marie told me what she had in mind, but I think it’s exciting. I can’t wait to see it. My house was the show home when these were all built so it will be like that all over again with everyone looking around.

“Marie has got so much patience to do what she does and this project is so unique. I’m not aware of anything else like it.”

By the end of the project, altogether Marie will have used the lion’s share of a 150kg bulk load of yarn which is 765,000m – or 475 miles – long. To put that into perspective, that is more than the distance between Warrington and Land’s End.

Though Grandma’s House is built to scale, its grid-like surface of pixels translated into stitches distorts reality. The effect mirrors memory: up close, the image disappears into abstraction. It is only with distance that the house comes into focus.

Marie added: “From a distance it won’t look knitted but close up it will. Visitors can walk through the front door and into the rooms of the house.

“The four walls of the rooms grandma uses the most have been knitted – the living room, kitchen, downstairs loo, bedroom and bathroom – but not their ceilings.

“I’m mostly excited about looking up when inside the house and walking between the walls of the inside rooms and the outside walls.

“Inside the rooms you will see the right side of the knitted fabric which will have the image of the rooms on them. The walkway between the walls will be the back of the knitted fabric.

“Due to my technique, the floats are left dangling rather than knitted into the fabric as you would normally do when knitting. I love these bits as they sort of look like wires on a machine.”

Grandma’s House will launch at Parr Hall on Sunday, 20 July, as part of Warrington Arts Festival. Pre-booking is required on the opening day but you can drop-in without a ticket between July 21 and 26. For full info and times or to make a booking visit parrhall.culturewarrington.org/whats-on