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The Big Ski Chair Affair Completed

The Big Ski Chair Affair Completed

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We did it! We finished our chair for the fundraiser that I told you about previously here and here. Dennis and I delivered four different chairs to their business sponsor locations. There are six more to move but thankfully, I have some help with four of those so I only have two more to move. Until the auction event that is. You can see some photos of the other chairs on the The Big Ski Chair Affair Facebook page.

The addition of the leaves took us quite a while to accomplish. We had to connect a lot of different wires and make sure all the leaves were secure.

You can see that there is an extra rock next to the main boulder that I felted. I already had this rock and thought I would add it to the chair. But I didn’t have a good way to connect them all together securely and so you couldn’t see the connection. So only the big rock was used in the end.

Here are a couple of close up photos of some of the leaves.

Here’s the back of the bench. We used a wooden rod through the two holes on the back of the chair and used that to hold up our back cushion with straps sewed into the cushion and velcro attachments.

Here’s a bit closer look at the rocks.

And a closer view of one end of the cushions. The cushions were eco printed on an old army blanket. We also have some throw pillows to go with the bench but we decided not to keep them with the bench until it is ready to be auctioned off. Since the bench will be sitting outside, we were afraid someone might walk off with the pillows.

And here I am with the chair after we moved it to the Firebrand Hotel who sponsored our chair.

And a slightly closer look of it against the rock wall. The colors are perfect against the rock and it looks like we meant it to go there! We didn’t know where the chair would be when we planned it so it’s amazing how well it fits in the space.

It was a big project and took a lot of time but we all really enjoyed the challenge. So if you ever are invited to try something big like this type of art project I would say, go for it!

The Big Ski Chair Affair

The Big Ski Chair Affair

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As a board member of a local non-profit called the Big Mountain Commercial Association (BMCA), I am always trying to think of ways to raise money for the organization. The BMCA runs the bus transportation system in our resort town of Whitefish, Montana. In the winter, the bus runs up and down to the ski hill and in the summer we have added Glacier Park to the route. To raise money for the bus, we decided to host The Big Ski Chair Affair. Whitefish Mountain Resort donated 10 older ski lift chairs, we had them converted to benches and now ten different artists or groups of artists are creating masterpieces that will be auctioned off to the highest bidder. During the summer, the ten chairs will be displayed at the businesses who sponsored a chair.

My local fiber art group decided to decorate a chair. The drawing above is our basic design. Our theme is leaves so we’re using eco printed felt and leaves made from copper, wire, stitched threads and felt. On the left side of the design you’ll see what looks like a rock under the bench. It will be foam covered with felt.

I have stitched quite a few felt leaves on to their copper wire frame. Hopefully, we’ll have enough leaves, currently we have about 40-50. These are a combination of hand dyed felt and an eco printed wool blanket.

Here’s a photo of the chair after we pulled off the padding. These seat four skiers and are very heavy.

This is after we primed the chair and put the eco printed fabric on to see what it would eventually look like with cushions covered with eco printed wool. We have since that time painted the chair a dark chocolate brown but I don’t seem to have a photo of it so I’ll have to show that to you later.

Now I’m starting to work on the rock. This is the foam that I am using.

I glued it together with WeldBond Glue which worked very well.

The leg of the chair has to go through the rock so it looks like the rock is holding up that side of the chair. So I cut holes and glued pieces together to start forming the rock shape. I am now using a heat cutting tool to shape the rock. It’s taking me much longer than expected but I’ll take another photo when I get the final shape carved down.

And each night this week, I have been making batts of grey crossbred wool from RH Lindsay on my drum carder.  I still have quite a few batts to make before I am ready to felt. And of course, I have to get the right shape of the rock. But the project is moving forward and we’re happy with our progress. It’s a big project but we’re having fun and it’s interesting to problem solve how we’re going to handle different issues that arise as we work with the chair.

 

 

 

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