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!

 “Details”( Drawn March 2016 )  18″ high, 14″ wide-  2″ deep

I don’t recall how I came to be on Abby Glassenberg’s newsletter BUT am I ever glad I did! I’m always thinking about her posts long after I’ve read them. She’s not afraid to go against the mainstream and say, hey, this is how I see it. I loved Abby’s insightful post about being an online mom. She’s challenged Alex Vernonelli’s, from Aurifill, behavior (I think we all truly thank her for that). Not to mention, through an article she wrote for the Craft Industry Alliance, she spearheaded conversations that resulted in raises for Quilt Festival Teachers. Needless to say, I look forward to her newsletter popping in my inbox and reading her blog.  Oh and Abby also has podcasts, which I love to listen to while I work away in the studio. They are, of course, excellent!

Most recently, in October of 2015 Abby and Kristin Link from Sew Mama Sew co-founded the Craft Industry  Alliance. When I was at Quiltcon this past February the consensus was, if you’re not signed up for it you should be! So I did. 

Um, so yeah, I think the secret’s out. I’m a fan girl. darn it, I was hoping to keep that under wraps but I can’t. I was so thrilled when Abby accepted my Stash Drawing Project invitation. I did the drawing in late December/early January. I knew Abby was moving into her new studio in February which you’ll see is a gorgeous space (photo credit to Lisa Neighbors)! I contacted her again in March so we could include it with her stash drawing. I was all set to do this post. But one thing kept nagging me, I couldn’t put my finger on it… Then I had an ah-HA moment. The drawing sucked. It fell flat,  the composition didn’t work. I don’t know why I didn’t see it earlier. Maybe it was the rush of Christmas and the New Year? I have changed things up a bit. People in the past have sent me their fabric to draw from. However, I know that ‘s a pretty big ask. This was the first time working from a photograph. Could that have been it? But I’ve done plenty of drawings from photos before. In the end it didn’t matter why. So I redrew it. And I’m SO glad I did!

I adored her vintage cotton and feedback fabrics. It would have been so disappointing to have botched those. I did try to save the other drawing but yeah, it’s fire wood now. What can I say, every once in a while it happens.

I’ve also changed the format from 5 questions to: finish this sentence. My goal for this Fabric Stash Drawing Project, is that it’s for those who participate. Abby was the first one to give this a go and I LOVED her answers!

Without further ado:

Hello, my name is Abby Glassenberg.

You might know me from my blog, While She Naps or from the trade organization for craft professionals I co-founded, Craft Industry Alliance 

I sew stuffed animals and dolls. 

I started sewing when…I was in 8th grade Home Economics. I got a C- on my project, a pair of very wonky Bermuda shorts, but I was excited about the potential of sewing and bought a sewing machine with my Bat Mitzvah money. 

The first piece of fabric that stared off my stash was… fabric from my mother-in-law. She liked to sew home dec like pillows and table cloths. She gave me left over fabrics from her basement and I sewed a monster with them.

The best advice I could give about starting a fabric stash is… search flea markets and yard sales. Lots of people give away their fabric stashes and that’s a great way to begin building without spending a lot of money. This way you can experiment without any real financial consequences. Later, once you hone in on what you really love to sew, sell the rest at your own yard sale.

If I decided to move into a tiny house, I’d have to downsize my stash. When I moved into my tiny house, if there was a windstorm that (WHOOSH) blew all the fabric out of my arms, the fabric I’d chase for miles to get back would be… this tiny pile of beautiful vintage feedback fabrics. They were given to me by an old friend who found them at the dump near her house. I love them because they’re prints that you don’t see anywhere else. They’re totally unique and the color combinations are so beautiful. I only have a small piece of each, but they’re perfect for special details like a teddy bear’s ear lining.

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!

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.

Cathy started attending our Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild monthly meetings shortly after that. Through a guild challenge using Cathy’s Sari silk from her shop, I made a pillow. When I posted about it on my blog, I also included this picture of the goodies I had bought the following year. Before I knew it Cathy had commissioned me to draw that photo (we added some spools to the back).

 From that point on, plus a few visits and coffees later, Cathy has licensed my work and recently commissioned a second drawing of her daughter Laura’s wedding dress. Which was a huge honour.

1. Trims, notions, pom-poms, buttons; you have all these wonderful items in your online store and in your booths. I look forward to seeing your booth every year at the Creative Stitches Show in Abbotsford so I can touch it all! I’m always fascinated by how store owners go about deciding what they think their customers will love. How do you decide? Do you just pick out what you like? I only buy what I love – it makes it easy for me to get excited about it and if no one else likes it I get to keep it all!

2. We’ve chatted about your fabric stash and you’ve expressed a need in growing it. How’s that been going? I have started collecting fat 1/4’s – they are the perfect size and I always purchase a few from the same collection in my favourite colours.

3. I have 2 stashes, a fabric stash and a trim stash…hmm, now that I think about it I have 3, I have a buttons stash too. Do you also have a stash of each? Of course! – I have shelves filled with jars of buttons, baskets of trims and a tall bookcase of fabrics in my craft room, but I also have an entire garage filled with products to pick from!

4. I’ve seen the Tim Holtz fabric you’ve been carrying and last year you had some lovely linen. Will Steam Trunk Craft Works be expanding into fabric any time soon? Please say yes! Please say yes! Yes, yes and yes – I am already drooling over some new lines.

Cathy’s daughter Laura’s wedding dress.

To see more stashes and interviews click HERE.

Drawing photo credit goes to the fabulous Raeanne Schachter.

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?!)

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!

I vividly remember doing this drawing. I packed this wood canvas (not so little) and my coloured pencils to Los Angeles, believe it or not!  My husband and I go to LA every year for E3. It’s a huge video game conference, kind of like Quilt Con but on steroids. Some years I go into the conference and see the show floor. Some years I don’t. This particular year,  June 2012, well, it wasn’t a show year for me. Instead I hung out at the hotel and drew this… and I loved it. To me, being able to work in a way where your attention is undivided, well, it was like a vacation and I relished it.

The night before drawing this I attended an LA Modern Quilt Guild meeting. I had been to one of their meetings the year before. Each time I had a great visit with Latifah Saafir, one of the founders of MQG. Sadly since then E3 and LAMQG’s meetings haven’t lined up. It’s too bad! I loved seeing what those modern peeps were up to. Plus visiting Sew Modern was an added bonus, the store where the LA MQG meetings are held.

For a door prize, that year, I donated a small drawing. They decided instead of giving it away they were going to put it up at Sew Modern. It’s an incredible store, if you’re in LA, it’s a must stop shop! If you’re ever there let me know if you see the drawing!

At 12″ high, 24″ wide and 2″ deep, this is one of my larger pieces.It’s called, “In Repose” and of course it’s drawn from Lesley Stenning’s gorgeous stash.

Oh and how could I forget, these photo’s were taken by the fabulous Reaenne Schachter!