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.

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!

Monica Solorio-Snow of  the blog Happy Zombie came to visit our guild. We ate, we shopped, we laughed,  we acted silly,

we sewed. Then we nicknamed everything in between! Here I’ll show you what I mean, follow me… er Carol!

Thursday night Monica got into town and we whisked her off to one of our FVMQG meetings as a surprise guest.  Monica met Carol Brown (our fantastic guild photographer) in person for the first time. Carol and Monica have been blog buddies from way back! We were all in a good mood and some photo bombing happened-Cynthia!

Friday was a shop hop. We rented a bus (Check out Carol Browne’ post about it!) and after a little hiccup of where the bus was supposed to pick us up we were off to our first stop now affectionately called “Fabric and Cheese”, otherwise known as Hamel’s Fabrics and Quilting. You see Hamel’s is right next to this amazing Cheese place, mmm, yummy cheese!

Next up was Diaso, always fun stuff to buy there and we also had lunch near by. Carol had some kind of tentaclly thing. She said it was yummy. Hey wait, is this turning out to be an inadvertently Carol Browne post bombing!

Then we blasted over to Spool of Thread where they were all hands on deck ready for us!

Next we booked it over to Little Quilt Shop in the Woods, which is very close to my house and I’ve never been… but now I know, watch out! Muahahaha!

We ended the day with dinner at the Cactus Club, where Carol Browne told the funniest story about sugar free gummies I have ever heard. Do yourself a favour. Don’t ever, EVER eat them. Just trust me. Don’t. You’ll regret it. Promise! Exhausted, we all went home only to return to the UVF bright eyed and bushy tailed for Saturday’s Sew in Day!

I have to admit I was stunned. I decided I was going to sew Monica’s Sprinkle pattern but I knew going in I was under prepared. I didn’t have my fabric cut out before the morning of the sew in.  Originally I was only going to sew a baby quilt because I didn’t think I’d have time but as the day went on I thought, you know what, I think I’m going to go for it! And I’m so glad I did! Even when Monica gave a GREAT trunk show in the middle of the day I still got it done!

I love this photo of Darlene during the trunk talk.She was in heaven being able to touch all of Monicia’s quilts and feeling VERY validated!

Like I said, even with a fabulous talk in the middle of the day, I finished a whole quilt top! It was such a fun pattern, fast and easy! As a self proclaimed improv quilter, I was a little nervous about the instructions but they were clear, easy and I when I went off script, it still turned out! I never get quilt tops done in a day, ever! Look at me I’m with the cool kids that sew fast! I highly recommend the pattern! You too can hang with the cool kids! See even one more reason to get the pattern!

So our weekend with Happy Zombie came to a close. After a ceremonial passing of the clipboard (good-bye Clippy I’ll miss you but I know you’re in good hands.) Monica, on bent knee, took the ceremony very seriously… as it should be!

We said our goodbyes, gave hugs and thanks for a wonderful weekend!

And I got a new clipboard.