Chair thing

Years ago when I began to experiment with stitching shirred cotton, a distressed black, slat-back chair became my "dress form".  I made a wardrobe of slip covers for it and when displayed at craft shows explained that I couldn't sell it because the seat was broken. Brilliant marketing.

‏
I spent last year settling into my sewing studio and exploring the Modern Quilt community in Portland.  After months of productive, but frustrating "Modern" quilt-making (due to my aversion to accurate quarter-inch seams) I returned to my shirred cotton work.  The dress form chair was left behind in our move from Long Island,  so I searched for a replacement, to no avail.

My next idea was to buy a chair from IKEA and slip cover it!  I was happily stitching enormous spirals of color in my new sewing room until I came to the realization I had to actually engineer those spirals into slip covers for the Vilmar chair.  I eliminated the actual chair, thus, eliminating that pesky engineering phase. A 2-D chair didn't need as much space and I could make any chair I wanted, this way! So began the chair series of wall hangings-

In the chair series I incorporated quilted linen as a base for my shirred cotton spirals and a hodgepodge of prints for the backs and binding. I liked making them.  I will be previewing them in my booth at the Lake Oswego Festival of the Arts, June 25, 26, 27. You can also see my fringe-y "Fuzzy Haystack" sculpture in the Special Exhibit: On the Fringe: Today's Twist on Fiber Art.