Painted Paisley Chair

Started out with a plain rocker.  I had half a gallon of unused red paint so that became my base color.

I had a French Provincial sort of thing in mind.  But I just wasn't feeling it.  So I started over.

I went with cheerful colors of purple, green, pink, orange and yellow which contrasted very nicely with the red.

Last year the New Freedom Festival had us paint the chairs there at the event sort of as an attraction.  I prefered having time to think out my ideas and to be able to stop and start either just to let one section dry before adding another design layer or just to step back and think some more.  I think it came out even better than last year's chair (which was not too shabby!)  Anyway, the festival and auction are today.  I'm glad  I'll be scoping out the arts and crafts and eating Bricker's Fries instead of having to watch my paint dry. 

It's the middle of March...

And I've now gotten one thing crossed off my UFO list. 
At this rate, I should get 4 things done all year...

This was what my son's gamer chair looked like.  He, and his siblings, have a habit of standing up on it and eventually it popped a hole right through the seat.

 

The thing that amazed me most was how cheaply made this chair was.  It was basically hollow inside. 

I shored up the seat with this piece of pine which I screwed into the frame.  Then on top of this I put a block of foam rubber for extra padding.  I cut off all of the vinyl and reused the foam from the original covering.

After visiting JoAnne's remnants table (twice due to not paying attention to how I cut my side pieces) I used the original vinyl as a pattern to sew these tweedy bits of upholstery, added a little headrest pillow and then stapled it all in place.  I have another vinyl gamer chair that is going to need the same treatment.  #2 son says he wants royal blue and black.  We'll see what the remnant table holds :)

chair, paper and fabric

It's been a week since I painted a chair at the New Freedom Fest. I think it came out swell (yeah, that's a corny word but I am sick of using 'really cool' and 'awesome' so there!) I haven't heard from the Fest organizer how much it went for at auction. All of the chairs were unique and nicely done. One of them was painted by the children at the fest. I think next year they ought to have a Jackson Pollock inspired chair where people could pay a dollar to throw paint on it. It was a lot of fun, I'd do it again if they ask me!

As some of you know it is not easy to get in the door of the fabric design profession and I have oodles of designs that I just know would make great fabrics. Rather than let them languish in my laptop, I have decided to put some of them together as sets of 9 and sell them on Etsy as digital paper packs. Each has a different name and it's been fun coming up with a small backstory for each one.
This is one of my favorites!

Several posts ago, I was debating whether or not to choose a pink or blue design to have printed from Spoonflower. I never did decide and got them both! The blue came out exactly as I'd pictured it, the pink has both alleyways and holes in the design. Somehow I never could get it fiddled right when I was designing it. Since then I have discovered using The Grid in Photoshop--that program of never ending surprises.

Up next: Pumpkins!