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Gee’s Bend and the Guy, It’s the GUY!

Lysa October 22, 2015 3

Back in 2014 our guild, the FVMQG, was asked to give a talk at the Creative Stitches show about Modern Quilting. I volunteered for the job and thought, yeah, I can do that… I can get up there and chat for a couple of minutes. After I committed to speaking I discovered it wasn’t a couple of minutes they were looking for. I had an hour slot to fill! Ahhhh… Gulp! Research, lots of research happened… and many, many pictures were collected. And, yes, I did compare the definition of Modern Quilting to Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of Hard Core Porn. Hey, there wasn’t really a strong definition until just recently. The best definition we had was, “I know it when I see it.”IMG_5132 (1)

 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.

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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.

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Esmari Taylor’s (from Warp & Weft) Stash

Lysa October 15, 2015 2

The show at Drygoods Design has come to an end. What an amazing experience. I’m so glad I held out for the perfect venue. Now I need to start planning for the next batch. In the mean time, let me introduce you to Esmari. At the time of this interview she owned a beautiful Canadian online fabric shop called Warp & Weft Exquisite Textiles. We were all very sad when it closed late in 2014. BUT now Esmari is off and running, literately, she’s doing a 1/2 marathon in just a little bit.

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!

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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!

Dec-OctDecember                                                            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.

Sept-July

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!

Jun-AprilJune                                                                         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.

March-Jan

March                                                                    February                                                               January

* 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.

 

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Cathy MacKay’s (from Steam Trunk Craft Works) Stash…. AND Five Questions!

Lysa September 28, 2015 1

14258838869_1e54ab38e6_o - Copy - CopyCathy sells trims and buttons! Vintage, pretty, yummy trims and buttons! Needless to say, I indulged myself the first year I saw Cathy’s Steam Trunk Craft Works booth at the Creative Stitches show (2012). When I got home from that show, I took a picture of my treasures and promptly… didn’t post them.full-shot

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.

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“2/12 Spools full of Sugar”
Drawn April 2013
20″ high by 24″wide – 2″ deep

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.

Some Rick Rack, Some Pompoms and Some Lace Walk into a Bar -Lysa Mairs's stash-6092

Some Rick Rack, Some Pompoms and Some Lace Walk into a Bar
Drawn April 2013
12″ high by 24″wide – 2″ deep

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!


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Jars of Pompoms
Drawn June 2013
12″ high by 24″wide – 2″ deep

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.

5. You do events all over Canada. Let’s say you have to ship your entire fabric stash out on a skid. There are 3 pieces you just can’t bare to let go of in case something were to happen to the skid. Instead you decide to keep them close to you so they won’t get lost. What 3 pieces of fabric would they be?  Tim Holtz Butterflies and Symphony. Plus my hand dyes velvets.

 

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Cathy’s daughter Laura’s wedding dress.
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To see more stashes and interviews click HERE.

Drawing photo credit goes to the fabulous Raeanne Schachter.

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A show at Drygoods Designs

Lysa September 20, 2015 5

 

Ever have one of those days where you feel so grateful you could burst! Big thanks to Keli from @drygoodsdesign, my amazing husband @ninjasaremammals. And especially to: @happysewlucky @smidgebox @poppyprint @cheryl_arkison @cynthiafrenette @thesteamtrunk

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.

Fabric Stash Drawing Show at Drygoods Designs in Seattle Sept 2015

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

Fabric Stash Drawing Show at Drygoods Designs in Seattle Sept 2015   Fabric Stash Drawing Show at Drygoods Designs in Seattle Sept 2015

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

Fabric Stash Drawing Show at Drygoods Designs in Seattle Sept 2015

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?

Fabric Stash Drawing Show at Drygoods Designs in Seattle Sept 2015 Fabric Stash Drawing Show at Drygoods Designs in Seattle Sept 2015

I like to think it’s HARDCORE!

Fabric Stash Drawing Show at Drygoods Designs in Seattle Sept 2015   Fabric Stash Drawing Show at Drygoods Designs in Seattle Sept 2015

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…

Fabric Stash Drawing Show at Drygoods Designs in Seattle Sept 2015

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

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Cheryl Arkison’s (Dining Room Empire) Stash

Lysa September 11, 2015 0

 

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.

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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!

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“Full Circle”
Drawn September 2013
16″ by “16 – 2″deep

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.

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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.

WEB-Chery-Arkison-A-Stack-of-a-Stash-Lysa-Mair-6081

“A Stack of a Stash”
Drawn September 2013
12″ by “12 – 2″deep

 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.

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“Just One”
Drawn September 2013
14″ high by “18 wide – 1″deep

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.stash 4

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

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