I have to admit, I’m speechless. Still. It’s been so long in the making and here it was, finally hanging a show of my fabric stash drawings in the perfect spot, Drygoods Design.

We packed everything up, headed out on the road and within four hours we were hanging the show.

I was so grateful for Keli, Drygoods owner and my husband for all their help hanging the show.

I brought some pencils as “business cards” to give away at the show. And yes, I hand pressed each letter to spell LYSA FLOWER into each pencil. Is that crazy?

I like to think it’s HARDCORE!

After a few little adjustments, adding the write ups about Berene Campbell’s, Lesley Stenning’s, Krista Hennebury’s,  Cheryl Arkison’s and Cathy MacKay’s stash, just like that…

it was hung! And it will be up until the end of September.

Have you ever had one of those days, weeks, months where EVERYTHING is happening? That’s my life right now. I’ve been down to Seattle three times in three weeks. First it was going down for the PNW meet up (If you are looking for the Match Needle Book Pattern- you can download the PDF by clicking HERE. I have plans to tuck it neatly in a widget that will stay on my website permanently but… ya, life). Then we were down for PAX . The final visit was for hanging my Stash Drawing project at Drygoods Designs. It’s up for the entire month of September. I’m dying to post about it but… ya, life. Birthdays, a new school year, visitors, meetings, yada, yada… without further ado, I’d like to introduce a very lovely lady who was gracious enough to jump on the stash drawing project train (and answered five questions about her stash). Another prairie girl like myself and author of the newly released You Inspire Me to Quilt, Cheryl Arkison.

I met Cheryl in my first online bee. A little message was sent out shortly after it started, “Hey, guys, look at this! Cheryl has a book.” That was Sunday Morning Quilts. “WOW!”, was my reaction. A few months went by and the next message we received, Cheryl just had a baby! It was her third kidlet. <insert> “WOW!” again! Yup, pretty impressive on both counts!

Around the release of Cheryl’s second book, A Month of Sundays, the FVMQG and the VMQG brought Cheryl out for a trunk show and two workshops. At the time I was the workshop/speaker coordinator. While emailing back and forth I took a chance, described my project and asked Cheryl if she’d like to join in. It wasn’t until we were in the middle of the trunk show while Cheryl was showing off one of her fabric boxes (that happened to be filled with fabric) that she mentioned it was for me (to draw). Yesssss!

1. Is there someone’s stash that you’ve been gaga over, maybe a little envious of, and or inspired by? I’ll admit that I get jealous of the stashes that look like fabric stores – everything on mini bolts and sorted so nicely. But only a little bit jealous. Fabric preferences are so subjective, as is the storage of it. I’m less likely to be jealous of the stash than I am of what they make from it.

2. You travel quite a bit to do trunk shows and workshops. Leaving from your front door, what is the farthest you have travelled to do a trunk show or workshop? In over a year I made it to all 3 Canadian coasts to teach – Vancouver, Pictou, and Inuvik. As I stood and drove on the Arctic Ocean that specific thought occurred to me and I was blown away by the opportunities that have come via teaching.

3. On your travels what is the largest fabric store you’ve come across? What about the smallest? You know what is funny? Most of my teaching is with guilds, not stores. So I often don’t make it to stores while I’m on my trips! It’s crazy, right? The smallest store would have been the mobile store Myra’s Stitch N Post brought to the Mayflower Retreat in Pictou Country. But she had some gems in the small stash! I’m spoiled with so many good stores in Calgary that I don’t shop too much outside of town.

 4. In 2013 you organized “just one slab,” for the victims of the Alberta Floods, which was an amazing project. Was there ever a final count as to how many slabs were donated? What was the final count on the number of quilts? I’m curious as to how many hours went into quilting and binding those quilts? Well, I didn’t track the hours of work, but let me tell you that if it wasn’t for volunteers and friends helping me the slabs would still be sitting in my basement!

The final count for slabs donated was over 2250. That makes for 112 quilts, at least. And that doesn’t count the quilts, quilt tops, batting, backing fabric, and cash donated. Most of the quilts have made their way into homes throughout the city and surrounding, affected communities. The last stash of 30-40 quilts is set to be donated to a seniors home in High River, just as soon as they are allowed back into the building. That’s right, they are still living out of hotels.

Slabs arrived from all over the world, the response was incredible. So proud of quilters and their generous hearts. And I must give thanks to local volunteers for stepping up to get them all done and ready for donation.

5. You’ve been discovering UFO’s (Un-Finished Objects) this past summer (2014) in your garage lately, which has been pretty entertaining to watch on Instagram. Let’s pretend a real UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) swooped in over your house and started to beam up your entire fabric stash. Of course you don’t want to risk getting beamed up yourself, however you have just enough time to leap into the air and grab three pieces of fabric. Which ones would you grab for? Any reason you’d grab for those particular three pieces? Ooh, fun question. I tend to get bored of a fabric if I use it a few times. There are a few, however, that still get me excited. And that I will happily use again and again until I can’t get it anymore.

Ledger from Carolyn Friedlander’s first line, Architextures. Preferably in the black and white.

Daisy Chain from Amy Butler. It’s an older one but I can’t get enough of the turquoise/navy combo.

The square dots in grey from Sherbet Pips from Aneela Hoey. It is the perfect grey to me.

For more fabric stash drawings and stash interviews, click HERE.

Earlier this summer my son was telling me about his friend in Vancouver, whose high school is being torn down over the summer. On the last day of school they gave the students buckets of paint with permission to graffiti the inside of the school. My son asked me, “Guess what they mostly painted?”

Without hesitation, I said, “penises.”

My son looked at me and blinked twice, “… That’s what I said too.” Then we both paused and stared at each other. Hmm, we both went there.

He broke the silence saying, “Mostly they wrote positive, life affirming messages.” We were both impressed (and mortified at our answers). Then he added, “mostly they were messages like, YOU CAN DO IT!  BUT there was one guy who painted,  apostrophe Ts  behind all the CANs.”

It was like all the air sucked out of the room when I heard that, well not the room, it was my car (we were driving at the time). I realized, I’ve had that same guy in my head! He’s added an apostrophe T to a bunch of my CANs. Although,  the apostrophe T has gotten smaller over time, I can still feel them occasionally. AND since 2015 is my year to live fearlessly, I’ve been diving in head first regardless of any apostrophe T twinges I might have. 

In January I registered for The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design. That was a biggie. I have one more module left. AND THEN! Earlier this week I discovered one of my designs from the first module was on the, to quote my friend Esmari,  “The holy grail” of design blogs, Print and Pattern!!!!! I’m not sure if I even recovered from that one yet. It’s the envelope design at the top of this post.

Then, this past February Esmari sent me an email telling me how I HAD to apply for the UPPERCASE Compendium book. She told me I just HAD, HAD to! So I took a deep breath and I did it. I just found out I was a finalist! I’ll take that. I didn’t get in the book but I’ve been told that my work will be shared on UPPERCASE’s newsletter. Which I LOVE! Again, I’ll take it!

In the next little bit I’m  finishing up two patterns, due to come out lickity split. My Match Needle Book pattern will be released for the Pacific Northwest MQG  meetup, (Aug 20-23rd). It will be posted on my blog as a free pattern.  Plus, my Hardcore Cassette Tape Mini Quilt is ooooh, so close to it’s final version. Yay!

Finally, this September (WOW! It’s coming fast!) I’ll be showing my Fabric Stash Drawing Project at Drygoods Designs in Seattle! I’m so thrilled! I’ve been searching for years and holding out for the exact right location to show this body of work. AND it’s happening. Yup, it’s on like Donkey KONG!

So take that, little man putting apostrophe Ts on peoples CANs. (…um you know I don’t mean boobs right?!)