Domestic Arts

May 17 2014

Uh-oh!

By melissasasichambers Domestic Arts 2.0

With all the temptations already available to me, from surfing other artists’ blogs, to pinning recipes sure to send me into instant sugar shock, to Netflix marathons, the last thing I need is yet another distraction. But have I ever found one. In fact, I think this one may even become an obsession.

Many of you will already be very familiar with it, and for those of you who are not, I’m talking about Spoonflower.

I have only just begun to scratch the surface and haven’t even really figured out how to navigate through all the possibilities available to me. No matter. I’m hooked.

This is what I came up with in about 20 minutes of goofing around. I started with my painting “Up, Up and Away (Hither and Yon)”

And then I played with the direction of the pattern and the colors and got these four different possibilities….

These photos are cropped screen shots of my patterns so the resolution isn’t great, but regardless, I was knocked out by how cool they looked. Almost like Native American patterns, or Pendleton wool blankets.

You’ll be seeing more from Sasi at Spoonflower, I guarantee. Be looking for the link to my account in my sidebar. It will be coming soon!

May 16 2014

Who Knew?

By melissasasichambers Lula

This is as close as Lula will ever get to wearing a grass skirt.

This is probably as close as Lula will ever get to picnicing in Hawaii.

This is a detail of the quilt I block printed with the feather wood block from my “Confluence” print — which I have already spent 20 hours Kantha stitching, for future picnics with Lula, and only finished one fifth of so far.

So is this.

And why, you ask, go to all this trouble for one little pup with four left paws, who would not eat pineapple if you paid her?

Lula.

Must.

Hula.

May 10 2014

Perfectly Imperfect

By melissasasichambers Lula, Ordinary Days

Keeping busy takes real discipline. When I don’t have a deadline, I don’t have a focus for all my energy and I’m a little like Lula with my feet heading in one direction and my hands heading in another.

Assigning myself projects to fill the time between my “real” deadlines helps, and so this week I worked on a new Kantha stitched quilt I hope to share next week, and a new Pom pow blanket….

Before:

After:

I’m really working hard at being disciplined about staying busy, not falling into the gaping maw of inertia, and as a result I stepped for a moment into a different sort of rut. A rut I mentioned in my last post — the “pattern of perfect repetition” rut.

Fortunately, Lula knew just how to show me the error of my ways…

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(Click on the text above to see a video of Lula in action!)

Obviously Lula did not think this blanket had nearly enough POW in its Pom pow! So I changed that…

And then because it wasn’t too late, I even made a quick fix on last week’s pompowsity…

She may be a bit challenged in the perambulation department, but Lula knows how to keep me on my toes! Thank you Lula, for the reminder that around here we prefer the perfectly imperfect.

Much better!

Apr 14 2014

Second Helpings: Painted Chairs

By melissasasichambers My Artist Home, Second Helpings

I don’t know what makes people think matched sets of things are so special. Personally, I prefer the intentionally mismatched. The sets where everything is the same, but different, like in SET, the game.

GOOD……………………………BETTER……………………..BEST:

So when I set up our new cosy dining room and we needed two more chairs to round up our seating capability to four I looked for a couple of “Windsors” to go with the two we already had. I found two which were similar — same rounded back, but smaller — giving me the kind of mismatched set I like the best.

Then I decided to paint them in entirely different ways.

The first, I painted black. You may have noticed by now, I love black as a background.

I painted glazed donuts with sprinkles as the motif. Better I should sit on them than the reverse, if you know what I mean!

I used acrylic paint and sealed with Minwax Polycrylic Sealer.

For the second chair I looked to my traffic box painting “Good Luck Sweet Cookie” for inspiration and cobbled together a variety of Chinese mofifs.

I used three shades of blue, and metallic copper acrylic paint and sealed it the same as the first chair.

I’m pretty sure the characters translate to “Do not sit on the Donuts.”

Second Helpings? Yes! The same but different? Yes!
Intentionally Mismatched? Yes!

SET!

Apr 13 2014

My Cosy Dining Room

By melissasasichambers My Artist Home

Since the beginning of the year I have either been swamped with my public art project; in the process of taking down (Foray III) or putting up (Metamorphosis) an exhibition for TVAA; or on artistic “hold” waiting to shake off the throes of inertia.

One of the things which I neglected during that time was my ongoing remix of our house, now that Logan has moved out and our space has essentially doubled.

I left off working on our cosy dining room in December. I was really happy to have gotten as far with it as I did before the holidays, and now that things are returning to a normal pace, I’m back to work on that room once again.

Here’s how it’s looking now…