A big thank you for everyone who played along with the Sew, Mama, Sew Giveaway day! It’s such fun sitting down at my computer reading all your comments. It’s my favourite, getting to chat and meet so many new people. I think that’s the part about blogging I love the most! …And it was such a treat to hear about everyone’s fabric too! Amazing! Especially since I know how hard it is to pick JUST one piece of fabric! I know it was a toughie!

Now, I am very happy to announce the winners!


#91-Jeifner from Second Hand Dinosaur and #17-Stephanie from Quarter incher #123-Jenny

Congratulations Ladies! And again thanks to everyone who played!

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Welcome! I’m so pleased you’ve popped by! I’m very excited about Sew, Mama, Sew Giveaway Day! I’ve done this day once before and it was so much fun and I met so many new people. I thought it would be fun to do it again!

Pack of cards stacked on drawings 2012

Okay, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty! The prize or prizes, I should say. This time around I’m going to give away 3 packs of cards. Each pack contains 5 cards (details from my fabric stash drawing project). Each winner will be chosen randomly and international entries are welcome. The contest will be left open until May 10th at 5pm PST. Oh and of course the winners will be announced Sunday, May 12th and the cards will be sent out the following Monday, May 13th.

"Love" 2013 Calender

I’ve drawn a few stashes now and I’m really intrigued by the fabric that people pull out for me to draw. Usually they pick their favourite fabric (favourite for one reason or another). Every stash is different and each person’s fabric selection becomes their portrait. I think the fabric says a lot about people from their colour selections, to prints and even to how their stashes are kept – messy or extremely neat. Above is a drawing of my favourite fabrics – my fabric portrait. If I absolutely had to just pick just one piece of fabric it would be this piece by Kitty Yoshidia for Benartex Cotton Screen Prints.

Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day!

Okay, to enter my giveaway, here’s my question: If you had to pick one piece of fabric from your stash to represent you, what would it be? Feel free to post what the piece of fabric you would be here or! If you’d like to show me?!

I have to admit I don’t know every designer out there. Plus, I’m sure we all have a piece of fabric that we just love but like me, oops, cut salvage was cut off, so now we don’t know who made the fabric, or what line it’s from. In that case, I have a solution. You can tell I love seeing other people’s stashes and fabric (don’t you?). To spice things up even more, if you send me a snapshot pic of your fabric on instagram @lysaflower or #showmeyourfabric then it will be counted as 5 entries! Seems only fair for all the extra trouble right?! One photo entry only please – I would love to see more but only one will count towards the giveaway.

Oh and a big thanks to Sew, Mama, Sew for organizing all this fun-ness! Enjoy all the other other amazing blogs and good luck!

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My husband has a friend that recently moved to Australia. He and his wife work remotely to Vancouver and Burnaby. Each week they rent a new house and live in a different city. When my husband told me about this I thought, wow! how freeing. To shed all our stuff and just have the essentials seemed like such a freeing idea. Then, I looked over at my newly acquired tape dispenser I brought back from San Fransisco and I realized, I like stuff. I like MY stuff. I like Chris’s stuff. I love that he collects comics, even if they are prone to invading my nightstand space. Actually we just recently cleared off the comics from my nightstand and sorted them into two piles, unread and read. We have storage boxes for the comic books but we have them inconveniently tucked away which makes them hard to get at. Hence the pile on the nightstand. I’ve been meaning to rearrange the storage space but one thing or the other had distracted me from doing it.

Pillow case for Ridge Meadows show

As we were talking about the “read and unread” pile my husband said, “just put them all into storage.” My face flushed with, back the truck up, that doesn’t make any sense to me at all. I respond with “why? Why even have them if your not going to read them?” Then I realized I like stuff but it drives me crazy when it isn’t used for its purpose, or used at all. We purposely bought our house because we wanted every room to be used each day. We didn’t want any room to be like my neighbours growing up. You know the houses with rooms where children weren’t allowed and all the furniture is all covered in plastic, even the lamp shades. 

Pillow case for Ridge Meadows show

Then I realized I buy fabric much the same way. I don’t buy fabric for fabric, or because it’s a great price. I buy it per project or if it’s a STOP EVERYTHING I LOVE THIS AND I MUST HAVE IT! Do I use that kind of fabric, eventually, but often I keep it out as eye candy until the perfect project comes along.  Having loads of unused fabric around stresses me out. I’ve seen lots of stashes and don’t get me wrong I love to look at stashes big or small. Just personally I don’t like my stash to get too big.

Time to make something out of you!

Which leads me to scraps. You can’t help but generate scraps if you sew and I love to use up my scraps. Sometimes I think I’m a reincarnated great depression farm wife because I love to use things up. Waste not want not!  So when our guild,  The Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild was invited to join in on the Ridge Meadows Quilt show May 3-4  we gave ourselves the challenge of doing a pillow, using a traditional pattern and to make it modern. I knew right away I wanted to do a postage stamp quilt.  At first I thought I’d use a zipper in my pillow but then I decided against it. Mostly because I realized I’d love to do this same thing with more of my scraps and make a full quilt out of it. So I tried to keep the pillow as easy as possible to seam rip, when the time comes. I’ve seen a sneak peek of the other pillows and we’re really excited about this show. We’ll have up other quilts as well, not to mention all the quilts that will be up from the Ridge Meadows Quilt Guild. If you get a chance come on by and say hi!

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Burger Time Block for Chris's month in the Fab Bee

Yup, it started out as a joke that we needed a dude in our Fab Bee online quilt bee and it’s an on going joke that we still don’t have one in the FVMQG either. Other guilds have them, sheesh VMQG has a handful of them! So I jokingly offered up my husband. That night as my husband and I were tidying up the kitchen after supper, talking about our day I broke the news to him that he was now in a quilt bee. To my astonishment he, without skipping a beat said, “I’ll do it.”

“What? Really? Are you sure?”

“Oh ya, I could totally do it.”

“Um, okay…”

Burger Time Block for Chris's month in the Fab Bee

And just like that he was in! It’s the last month of the bee and it’s his turn to be the Queen Bee… er King? Bee. Actually, April 1st we were to have all the fabric out the door, which we tried desperately to do before we left for San Fransisco. Since getting back, every weekend he has been working on his write ups.  Each one is different, with links, a history and trivia. Um ya, I kinda created a monster. He even wrote a program to generate images in a way that would make it easier for the ladies. His theme, video game pixel art from arcade games back in the golden era (the ’80’s).

Burger Time Block for Chris's month in the Fab Bee

While he worked away on his write ups I knew there would be no way he could get his sample block done so I did my block instead. We finally got them all sent out last week!

Burger Time Block for Chris's month in the Fab Bee

Can you guess what game it’s from? Do you remember the game Burger Time?  It was one of the games I was fairly good at and had a chance at being a wiener, I mean winner!

Burger Time Block for Chris's month in the Fab Bee

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My husband has been to New York a few times and he was really excited about going back to Soho.

Purl Soho-New York

It was day two of our New York adventure, again cold but there were places to see and places to go, so we couldn’t let freezing wind stop us! Purl Soho was one of those places.

Purl Soho-New York

Purl Soho has a great online store and their brick and mortar store was just as beautiful. When you walk in the first half of the store is all yarn. Now I’m not a knitter. I resist the urge just because I know I could easily get sucked into it. It would become a whole other can of worms and I already have a significant UFO pile to manage (Un-Finished Objects). However that didn’t stop me from appreciating the feel and the magnificent colours of  all that yarn.

Then of course at the back of the store, that’s where you find all the bolts of fabric…

Purl Soho-New York

… and the quilts…

Purl Soho-New York

… and the thread…

Purl Soho-New York

… and the kits. How cute are these!

Purl Soho-New York

Again, this is my disclaimer, I didn’t buy all this fabric at Purl Soho, but I did buy the last four plus the needles and the silk thread… plus one more treat, that I’m working on as a surprise!

Fabric brought home from New York

I also bought this fabric! I was really thrilled to find it, I’ve only been searching three years for it! Well, not it specifically but we needed fabric for a curtain in our studio. We just couldn’t find the right fabric to match our colours. I’m proud to say I sewed it up as soon as we got home (one less UFO).

Purl Soho-New York

So if you ever find yourself in New York, pop by Purl Soho, it’s a must stop shop!

Purl Soho-New York

 

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