UPDATE: WWW.LYSAFLOWER.COM’s new site will be going live September 5th, instead of the 1st. See you there!

Hello you! How have you been? How’s your summer been? A whirlwind, like most summers? Our family just got back from a typical family wedding.

In Italy!!! That part not so typical for us! For those of you who followed me on Instagram, you know what I’m talking about. It was marvelous. Like most people I love traveling but my two favourite reasons are:

1) I get caught up on my reading (I may need an intervention a some point. My stack of books is growing faster than they’re getting read). I was thrilled that I got through all three books I brought with me on our trip. Now if I can just resist buying more books…

2) Travelling gives me time to reflect on BIG PICTURE stuff. What I’m doing and why I’m doing it.

And with number two I’ve made these three decisions:

     1) I’m retiring my drawing project (at least for now).

     2) (so I can) Focus on my surface pattern and sewing designs.

     3) Create a website that reflects and shows my work more prominently. Still including a blog where I’ll continue to share projects, inspiration and my creative journey.

Which  means this will be my last blog post from this site. It also means if you subscribe you’ll no longer receive email updates from this site.

So how will we stay in touch then?

I will continue to use WWW.LYSAFLOWER.COM for my new site and bonus! It’ll also have an email subscribe.

I cordially invite you anytime after September 1st to visit WWW.LYSAFLOWER.COM. I’m beaming with pride about it. I’m so excited I can barely contain myself!!! It’s so pretty! I can’t wait for you to see it.

I’ve always been so grateful for, loved and enjoyed you all so much. Thank you so very much for all the support, comments and camaraderie you’ve been so kind to give…

Now, let’s see what kind of trouble we can get into over there!

And all while Part 2: Surface Design was happening during the first half of March, this was also happening – creating and designing this puppy!

A big thanks to my husbands helping hand. He did inspire this quilt but also picked the most opportune time to ask if I needed the roller before this shot. He’s always there to keep me on my toes!

After spending so much time on the computer lately it was really nice to get back to my sewing machine.

BUT then this happened…

A power outage. They’re always so convenient, especially when you have a design and a quilt due all at the same time. We were 36 hours with out power. Let’s just say I LOVE POWER! I thought I was grateful for it before, now I really, really appreciate it!

Luckily I was able to hit all my deadlines before rushing off to our annual San Francisco trip. I found this stowaway in my pocket, I have no idea how he got there but I decided to show him the sites!

And of course what would  a trip to San Francisco be with out a trip to Britex Fabrics.

The day after we got home from San Francisco I was off to the Creative Stitches show to work my shift at our FVMQG booth. I didn’t get as much time there as I liked but I was happy to be greeted by these lovely ladies, Darlene (left), Brenda (top), Vera (right) and Peg (seated).

Phew, it feels like it’s been quite a whirlwind! Mix in Spring Break and ooft! I’m happy life is starting to get back to normal. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming!

I’m a super hero? Nope.

I’m a super fast bow and arrow shooting spy? Well… no.

They just stared up again after their mid season hiatus? Yup, nailed it! And on all those shows after their hiatus they have a recap. You know the part where they say “Previously on…”. Here’s mine (It’s quite long so I’ve broken it into three posts. This is Part I):

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Previously on Lysa Flower… I had just won a portfolio review with Elizabeth Olwen from her Skillshare class, “How to create a Fabric Collection in Two Weeks.” If surface design is something you have a burning desire to do, I highly recommend any of her classes.

QUILTCON! It happened, it was amazing. We ran around the show acting like it was Halloween and ALL the people were giving out full-sized chocolate bars!

Here’s a quick recap of the highlights:

TOP Left: We met Janine Vangool from Uppercase Magazine (OMG! You know how much I love that magazine right?!), Kimbery Knight from Cotton + Steel! (Pinch me did that really happen?) Oh and the cute little red head was our fearless Sherri!

TOP Middle: Note to self, next time take pictures of the quilts AND the LABELS! D’oh! Hand smack to forehead! Luckily Instagram came to the rescue to identify most of the quilts, although I don’t know the name of the quilter from this middle picture. If anyone knows please let me know.

TOP Right: This mini hexi quilt ( 1/4″ hexi’s I might add!) was done by a 14 year old named Sophia Locke.

MIDDLE top: This bridge quilt was a guild challenge. Which Guild you ask? Don’t know. What was it called? Don’t know? I know, so helpful hey?! Labels woman, labels!!

MIDDLE Middle: We found my QUILT!!! Yay! (Check out Sherri’s awesome bag!)

MIDDLE Right: I adore this quilt! It was from Windham Fabrics booth. It was a stunner and they also had the booth covered with paper origami dresses made with all their designer’s prints. Did I mention we met Lotta Jansdotter!!!! Holy Moly!

BOTTOM Left: Hillary Goodwin’s quilt from Entropy Always Wins

BOTTOM Middle: Anna Marie Horners block of the month from Creative Bug

BOTTOM Right: The whole catalyst behind going to Quiltcon was to meet up with my Auntie Caryl (who knew more people there than I did! I guess owning a quilting shop for 22 years will do that). It was wonderful to reconnect with her and I adored our time together!

I made up a little name tag zippy pouch for the occasion (shh… don’t tell anyone but a tutorial is in the works!).

I also made up some #sewinglikeamothertrucker buttons for trade-zees!

This quilt by Alison Chambers summed up up the trip. At 3 am we left my house for Quiltcon. We closed the trip by getting home at 1 am.

My partners in crime Judy and Sherri, Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild peeps!

I was offered one piece of advice going to Quiltcon, never take more than two classes. Which is what I did. Now if I were to add onto that advice I’d say take them early in the weekend when you’re fresh. I loved my two classes but I was so worn out by then. Still super duper fun! I would have liked to have been a bit perkier.

The first class I took was from Lizzy House. Did you know she’s engaged? Anyways, it was really fun to meet her and take a block printing workshop.

The second class I took was a Valori Wells all day block printing workshop. I had come prepared with images from my Snail Mail collection. I had also wanted to take her silk-screening workshop but since I decided in July 2015 to go to Quiltcon they were all full. I was fine with that, feeling lucky just to get into this workshop, until we started playing. Now, it’s firmly on my to- do list!

Lysa Flower trivia, that’s what I studied in art school, printmaking. It was pretty nifty getting back to it.

It could have been the sleep deprivation but it felt somewhat like a dream!

And before I new it, “Wham Bam thank you Ma’am” it was over! I was back home and received this lovely swap package from Amanda. A pretty snazy welcome home if you ask me!

It was true! There was my Cassette Tape Quilt! It had been selected by the Modern Quilt Guild to be in the LA Times!

We double checked the  LA Times  Website. There sits my quilt beside Carolyn Friedlander‘s. The fabric designer who’s fabric we were given, along with a handful of Robert Kaufman Kona solids last March from our guild, for a mini quilt challenge.

Violet Craft, Jacquie Gering, Amy Friend, we’re all included in the article! C’mon!! ( I’ve since discovered Lindsey Neil’s Instagram feed @penandpaperpatterns-WOW!) AND, did you see “On-Off-Standby, Pink” by Janice Smyth? Gaw all the quilts, A-maz-ING! Talk about good company! How the heck did this happen?!… Well, I know I need to thank the Modern Quilt Guild. So thank you Modern Quilt Guild AND thank you for creating this community… AND for being awesome!

My head’s still having a hard time wrapping it’s self around it. Talk about the little stinking quilt that could. Posting about it on Instagram while I was making it last March, my feed lit up like a Christmas tree. Requests for a pattern poured in, so I did it, I made a pattern . I recently released it on Etsy. Then feeling like, what the hell, mixed  in with a pep talk from Sherri, I submitted it to the Quiltcon show. It got in-YAY! (I’m going this year, which makes it extra exciting!) THEN this happened… And really, my only plan was to make a pillow for my bed with cassettes on it. Huh.

Is it too last week to talk about New Year resolutions?

… Well. I’m doing it anyway. And I’ll be”Outrageously Joyful” doin’ it! That’s my mantra for 2016. “Outrageously Joyful”.

Last year I declared 2015 was my year to live fearlessly. And I have to say, I did more things that made me cringe, want to hide and hold my breath BUT I also had a year where I felt more alive. A year that felt I was headed in a direction that I intentionally wanted to go. I was driving the boat instead of going with the flow. It was AWESOME sauce!

So what’s this got to do with cleaning my toilet and being outrageously joyful? The two usually don’t go hand in hand (at least not in my world).

When my world opened up with being fearless, I learned SO freaking much! But you know what happens when you learn stuff, you realize how much more you NEED to know. Three quarters of the way of through 2015, I realized there’s a lot of back end stuff I need to set up to for myself to move forward. Some of these things are big, some are small. Some things that I can get done lickty split and some things will be a grind. I have a lot of ground to cover and as I’m doing it I want to be outrageously joyful doing them. Reminding myself this is what I want, this is what I’ve chosen…

Here it goes: Yay! Cleaning the toilet! I’m so glad I have a toilet and I don’t have to go outside in the cold and use an outhouse. I LOVE indoor plumbing!!!

2015’s recap, left from right:

1. December-I released my # sewinglikeamothertrucker Hard Core Cassette Tape Pattern
2. November-Finished Module 3 of The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design!
3. July-Released my free Match Needle Book with a kit for the Pacific Northwest meet up in Seattle (Circa 15 provided the fabric for the kits)
4. February-Working in Module 1 (The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design) I designed my first ever repeat. I broke into giggles when it worked! I used cut paper (because I was being way to precious with my drawing)  and have since framed the cut out. I proudly display it in my studio.
5. September-A show of my Fabric Stash Drawing Project at Dry Goods Designs in Seattle. A dream come true!
6. June-A design from Mod 1 (The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design) was featured on Print+Pattern (Brain completely exploded!!! Wildest dream came true!!)
7. January-My Fabric Stash Drawing Project was featured in Love Patchwork & Quilting. After being mentioned on Flossie Teacake’s blog, that happily fell into my lap.
8. Pretty much the same thing as #2.
9. July-This is the cassette tape book cover I swapped at the PNW meet up in Seattle. It was won by Jonna. Who’s Jonna? Jonna, tested the cassette tape pattern for me (and many versions of it!) We met in person for the first time at the there. She’s as lovely in person as she is online. She’s @bespokeoutlaw on Instagram. Definitely check her out, her feed is amaze-balls! Just like her!
10. 

Oh and not on the list but definitively a 2015 highlight, I was hugged by a Sea lion! It was an “Outrageously Joyful” hug!

 Yeah, yeah, yeah, but who’s the guy? One little tidbit that always stuck out in my mind while I was researching was a story about a man and his son who went out to Gee’s Bend looking for these quilts. I believe I read this on Wikipedia, which changes and morphs, so I can’t find the exact link anymore. (Note to self: reference guides in the future may be handy). It niggled at my brain, why would a guy and his son go looking for quilts? I can see a father and son bonding over lots of stuff but looking for quilts? Shrug, okay?

So there I sit Monday night (October 20th) in the middle of the Net Loft on Granville Island, ready to hear the Maiwa sponsored talk from two Gee’s Bend Quilters; Louisiana Bendolph (shown below with Sherri on the left) and her mother Rita Mae Pettway (shown Below with Vera on the right). Hmm, who’s the guy? He starts, Hi I’m Matt Arnett and back in 1998 my Dad and I… wait? What? He’s the GUY? He’s, the GUY! CLICK, CLICK, CLICK. Now it all makes sense.

He’s the guy who drove all over the south looking for a quilt his dad has seen in a picture.

He’s the guy who was looking for a bathroom in Mary Lee Bendolph’s home and by chance noticed a quilt peeking out in a closet.

He’s the guy that in 2002 with his father organized a show of 70 quilts at the Museum of Fine Arts, in Houston. Thus making all our Modern Quilter heads explode.

He’s the guy whose family saw the beauty in these quilts. Then they made sure the world saw them too, by publishing Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt in 2006.

He’s the guy that helped facilitate these women to be proud and understand the greatness of their work. Work that they were going to do, even if no one in the world noticed. And we are so very grateful.

He’s the guy who helped the world see Gee’s Bend’s brilliance… tremendously simplified down, yes, but you get the idea.

He’s THE guy.

Esmari has beautiful taste in fabric! In 2014 we joined forces and created an online calendar. These drawings weren’t in the Drygoods show as they sold last year (not a bad problem to have). Adding a new twist to “The Stash Drawing Project!”, Esmari supplied all the goodies and I supplied well, the drawing part. Through our online back and forth, although we did meet once in person, I’ve discovered she’s very funny, has great taste in music (similar to mine that is) and she can drive a forklift! You gotta love that! It’s on my bucket list!

Still how did this all come to be? How did we find each other? Well, we met through a challenge she gave our guild in mid 2013. At the time I was the FVMQG’s treasurer and needed to send her a cheque for the challenge. Naturally I used one of my cards to send it. Bada bing, bada boom… We got to chatting because she loved the card! Late in 2013, I proposed this crazy 2014 calendar idea. In turn she invited me to join her  Warp and Weft Sewing Society, an online community where several of us, with Esmari at the helm, sewed challenges using Lotta Jansdotters and Elizabeth Olwen’s fabric. It was such fun to see what everyone made! When we weren’t doing challenges everyone sewed all kinds of things and I drew these calendars. Everyone’s work, of course, was smashing, because remember Esmari has excellent taste in fabric… and people!

1. You’re the owner of Warp & Weft Exquisite Textiles. How on earth do you ever decide on what fabric and notions to bring in? Are they easy to pick? Do you have a system? Or do you just go by your gut? Hah! It’s never, ever easy. Unless there’s a quarter that’s really off for whatever reason it’s never easy to know which collections to pick because there’ll be so many fabulous ones to choose from. It’s torture, I tell ya! I do try to follow my gut, though, and I always pick something that I’ll be happy to use in my own home. I’m also quite critical of the designs and the overall look of a collection. There’s definitely a serious bit of curating that takes place before something hits the shelves at Warp & Weft!

December                                                            November                                                          October

 2. I’m intrigued by what you did before you opened your online fabric store. Can you tell us a bit about that? Ah well, yes, this is probably where the critiquing and curating of my inventory comes from. I trained as an Interior Designer in Belgium and have worked with high-end furniture and cabinetry manufacturers ever since. Most recently and before I started Warp & Weft I worked for a well-known German manufacturer in Toronto. The philosophy behind this company’s products is, purity of design, minimalism and the use of the absolute highest quality materials money can buy. That kind of set the tone for me with Warp & Weft too. Even though I’m not dealing with a super high-end product I still approach it from the same point of few as far as design and quality are concerned.

September                                                          August                                                                    July

3. In your 2013 Made In Feature I remember reading 5 thing people don’t know about you, that you can drive a forklift. Does that come in handy for moving bolts of fabric around? I can’t believe I didn’t think of that!! All this time I’ve been lugging bolts of fabric around and I could have been moving it with a forklift! Mind you, it would have to be a forklift that can do stairs because sadly my workspace is not on the ground floor…Let’s just say I’ve become quite buff since starting Warp & Weft!

June                                                                         May                                                                           April

4a. You know I’m enamoured by your Merchant and Mills line. I love the pins: the regular pins, the glass headed ones, the entomology pins (they glide like butta!), your safety pins (the black, the light bulb and the French ones). Then of course there is the sewing repair kit and the folding ruler! I had never seen this line before and I’ve only seen it in San Francisco since. How did you come across them? Mmmmh, I had to think about that one but I think this is how the story goes. I am quite a big fan of Uppercase magazine and I was paging through one around the time I was starting Warp & Weft and I came across an advertisement for a UK based quilt shop which looked quite interesting and in browsing through their products I came across Merchant & Mills. It was love at first sight. I then got in touch with M & M and the rest is history.

4b. I’m also in love with your Sajou line – I don’t know how I lived without the linen thread. It’s another line I haven’t seen anywhere else. Can you tell us about it? I can’t recall how I came across Sajou but I can remember the day I received the catalogue from them! You can’t believe how many beautiful things they have – let’s just say trying to stick to your budget is futile! Their story is quite interesting. The Maison Sajou company, which was started in the late 1800s, was revived by an avid haberdashery collector and graphic designer in 2005. Frédérique Crestin-Billet started collecting haberdashery items from a very young age and since she’s become involved with Maison Sajou she has made it her business to keep traditional and specialized French workshops in business. Each pair of Sajou embroidery scissors, for instance, is handcrafted in workshops that have often been in families for generations and Sajou linens and threads are all manufactured in the mills in the Northern parts of France, which is traditional the home of textiles and threads. So not only are their products of the same heritage and quality as back in the 1800s but they also still use the same packaging designs as back then which gives everything a wonderful vintage feel to it. I find it fascinating that in this day and age there are still some things we can use that haven’t changed a bit in more than 150 years. It kind of puts things into perspective for me.

* All calendars measured 14″ high by 11″ wide- 2″ deep

 5. Let’s say you were on the Newly-wed Game. Behind a curtain you pick your 3 favourite fabrics from your stash. Then your husband has to guess which 3 you picked. Would he pick correctly? You want to go test him now don’t you? Don’t worry we’ll wait… did he get it right? Which ones did you pick and which ones did he pick? Hahaha! I’d test him right now but as has been the case for most of this year my husband has been working away from home so the best I can do is send him the link to my website and ask him to pick three items. I’m pretty sure he won’t have a clue though…

I could, however, tell you which of my crafting and sewing items he really likes for himself. He has since been banned from using some of these – see if you can guess which ones they are:

1. My hot glue gun – I no longer know where it is or whether it is still functioning. It’s probably ended up in the garage. I do know that he complained to me about it being useless because the wires he tried to glue to the baseboards have come unstuck now. Go figure.
2. My rotary cutter – I caught him cutting something very random from the garage with it once. Once being the operative word her. Quite possibly it also had something to do with the hot glue gun…
3. My sewing machine – he wanted to take it apart the day I got it “because he’d never seen the insides of a sewing machine before!”. It led to use having a huge argument because he thought I was being selfish for not letting him poke around the guts of my brand new machine. He is an engineer after all – what could possibly go wrong??!!

Curious about the other fabric stashes? Just 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?!)

Okay, everyone with me. 1, 2, 3… Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear Cyyyyynthia, Happy Birthday to you!… Aaand many mooooore! Yay! Yup, it’s her Birthday and to celebrate I thought I would post this! If you’ve ever chatted with Cynthia online, you’ll know how lovely and bubbly she is, which I think comes across like crazy in this interview. (But, um… I’m kind of biased.)

In the summer of 2010 I saw a tweet from Lesley Stenning talking about a call out for a new group called the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild. Hmm, seemed interesting. I attended that “keener” meeting as it was nicknamed. Holly the founder the Vancouver group asked us to put a dot on a map where we all lived. Everyone’s dots clustered in Vancouver. My dot, well… it was about 5 inches to the right of all those dots. It took me over an hour to drive out to the meeting but I was willing to do that since I hadn’t met anyone out in my area that was interested in fabric and quilting let alone modern quilting.

The “official” VMQG meeting was scheduled a few weeks later. Holly generously offered to put me in touch with a few people out my way. Perhaps we could carpool? One of those people Holly email introduced me to was Cynthia. We instantly hit it off emailing back and forth. We made arrangements to go to the next VMQG meeting. Luckily we hit it off in person too and enjoyed the meeting and our drive. However, we did realize that our drive was as long as the meeting. As we drove home we chatted and figured we couldn’t be the only two people in the Fraser Valley that were interested in modern quilting . It was decided. We would start our own guild. Cynthia set up our online presence and I secured our meeting space, Quilt Essentials, a local fabric in Abbotsford at the time. The rest you could say was Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild history. In hindsight, we really didn’t know each other at the time but what fun we’ve had ever since! Plus, I’ve had the pleasure of learning from and watching Cynthia accomplish such awesome things. Like designing fabric for Robert Kaufman!

1. Of all the people I’ve interviewed, you’re kind of the trickiest because I know you so well. What are three things about your stash that would surprise me? Hehe my kindred sista from another mista! I don’t think you’ve seen a lot of my stash lately, it’s always changing. Three things that might be surprising, hmmm…

 3. Kind of an add on question to number 2. Picasso had his blue period and thinking about your go to colours, did you have a particular colour scheme say, in the 80s, 90s and the early 2000s? Black, black, and black for all three. No colour. The “Moody Broody Artist Chic” decades! Decades I tell ya!

I didn’t do quilting until most recently, so it was mostly garment sewing I did up ’til modern fabrics started appearing on the scene. Then I started being brave and accepting and using colour, purple was first. Now it’s all colour all the time and I rarely use black!

4. You collect vintage fabric… where is the oddest place you ever found treasure? Oh man! I found some pieces of vintage (1977) Marimekko shoved in a plastic bag in a shoe bin at one of the local thrifts. I saw the brilliant turquoise peeking out & was like hey. That looks like something. And it sure was!

That I actually am saving and have’t used yet. It needs the perfect project to showcase the large-scale print.

You always can find stuff at the bottom of bins where nobody dares stick their hands. That’s where the good stuff is!

5. You walk into the room where your stash is stored, Starr and Charlie have been having a grand time playing tug of war with your fabric. What 3 pieces of fabric doyou scramble to make sure they haven’t touched? Is there a particular reason they are your three favourite pieces? Honestly nothing is truly sacred other than my super duper old vintage pieces like one I have from my great gran, a hand beaded and embellished floral strip on net/tulle, with silk ribbons, silver beads, and truly vintage touches. It’s very fragile so I keep it stored way up high in a latched suitcase where my furry friends can’t get it. I love it because it’s truly handmade, likely from a beautiful 1800’s dress, and I like to imagine the story behind it, where it came from, and why my great gran so carefully kept it tucked away, and having it pass down to me is really cool.

I might also get pissed if they touched “my” stash- the sample yardage pieces of fabrics that I designed for Robert Kaufman, they are like my babies!

“Hello Cynthiaf, nice to meet you!”

Drawn November 2012

14″tall, 11″ wide, 2″deep

SOLD

Otherwise I think I would get a giggle them playing with my stuff, they always like to come and see what I’m doing and help me! As long as they don’t actually eat it, it’s all good.

We have our sit on the quilt for a photo thing too, as soon as I lay out a quilt on the floor to baste or take a photo, they go sit on it and wait for me to take a photo. It’s very hilarious!

Growing up I liked pink because I thought that’s what girls do. They like pink. By eight I had a strong aversion to it. Yellow was my colour of choice. It reminded me of sunshiny days, butter, flower centres and wheat fields.

I carried this aversion to pink with me for a long time. Although, over time, I started to notice I was attracted to yellowy pinks. Blue fuchsia still made me cringe a little but I happily made my piece with pink… it was acceptable. Or so I thought. A task during my first module with Art of Business and Surface Pattern Design was to look at colours around me, things I wear, things I collect, paper, cards, designs I liked. I was dumbstruck.

Apparently I don’t just like pink, I LOVE pink! So many things I own are pink. I guess I was too close and didn’t know it happened until I was asked to take a step back. It seems silly now, if we’ve met in person this last year, you’ve probably seen me with light pink hair-d’uh! How could I not see it every morning?

One of those things I pulled out for the Art of Business and Design was a business card I collected back in December 2013 at Maker Faire.

I decided to study the design and make it back in January of 2014. Well, I finally finished it for the Creative Stitches show. It hung as a mini quilt but I’ll finish it as an over sized pillow for our home.

While making this quilt, I also fell in love Cage the Elephant but especially this song, which inspired the quilt’s title, “Daydreams”.

And yes, yes I do daydream about pink now… it’s true!