Dining room chairs

After much time, and a few mis steps, my dining room chairs are finally finished!

I had this crazy idea to paint my own upholstery fabric and found a wonderful family based upholstery company to join me on this wild ride. 

First we had to agree on a fabric. Ineeded it to be an organic fabric that would take the dye. They needed it to be upholstery weight.  We agreed on this plain weave cotton and the order was placed. There was no looking back!

I received the bolt and started experimenting with the circles. My teacher, Jane Dunnewold suggested using "Dynaflo" and this worked really well. Once I got the hang of applying it with paintbrushes, the colours blended well, and I was able to apply and blend the tones creating brights, darks, and shadows. 

Once the circles were done, I was pleased with the results but found the whole effect was a bit static. Again after a little mentoring from Jane, she agreed that a wavy line might be fun and dynamic and suggested I use a pressurized pen with an air compressor to shoot out the dye. 

Why not?  I had no idea what she was talking about!

Off to the craft store to find out what this meant, bought the tools, filled the pen with black Dynaflo dye and I was off to the races. (After I figured out which end the dye flew out of). This too, was a long learning curve. I had to learn how to regulate the flow, with the speed of my hand movement as well as how far away from the fabric my hand had to be, and the angle....this was a bit like free motion stitchery,except with two more variables to contend with. 

Next time you see a spray painted mural on a building, be impressed! It is very difficult to do well. 

It was a lot of fun to do the spray painting although it took a while to get the hang of it, and there was lots of spilt dye along the way. And yet I still felt they were not completely done. 

I thought if there was absolutely no stitching on the fabric, they really wouldn't be me. The kind upholstery team allowed me to take the pieces home again after they were cut, and I added some bold hand stitching with 6 ply embroidery floss and big eyed needles. 

And finally I was satisfied!

Returning the work to the upholsterer, they did a fabulous job turning my paintings into chairs, and now I can't wait to have you over for dinner and let you try one out!

Just let me scotch guard them first!

Many thanks go out to the team at Vogel Upholstering for being so patient with me and my slow learning curve, and doing such a fabulous job in the end!