lysa flower: : Page 9

Grow Hope Foundation’s April Auction

Lysa April 22, 2015 0

I have been lucky enough to be asked again to donate to another Grow Hope Foundation Auction. Of course it’s more than a pleasure, Kimberly Taylor has such a big hear,t how could anyone say no?

She’s enlisted many incredible artists who donated work from their sketch books. The pieces won’t be revealed until Friday. Personally, I can’t wait. Shhh… don’t tell anyone but I’ve taken a few sneak peeks.

Although this wasn’t from my sketch book it was a rough for a wedding dress commission. I sewed it on two pieces of paper. One piece is handmade/printed. The other is a heavy weight rag paper. Both are archival papers.

My hope is we can make the world feel as beautiful as this bride did on her wedding day… filled with potential, hope and love. I know it’s an overdose of sweet sentiment! What can I say? The Grow Hope Foundation make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside!

Design School-Module two. #letsgetthismothertruckerstarted

Lysa April 12, 2015 10

I knew this year would be a wild roller coaster ride and it very much feels like one.

Remember back in January when I declared 2015 would be my year of living fearlessly?

A skeleton paper Japanese lantern #abspdm1

Playing around with pens, colour and Japanese paper lanterns #abspdm1

In February, I finished module one of The Art of Business and Surface Pattern Design. This is some of work I completed during it.

Module one, like the first loop on a roller coaster, was exciting and thrilling. It stretched me beyond what I imagined I could do.

It gave me clarity, where potentially I could have spent years floundering trying to find. Most importantly, I felt trust in my drawing and in my decisions. It’s where I think the Cassette Tape Mini Quilt came out of.

The second module starts tomorrow! The past few days have felt very much like the lead up to that big roller coaster drop. Click, click, click…

You know it will inevitably plunge and hurl you into three fast loopy loops!

It gives you just enough of time to question, can I do this? Will I be prepared? You brace yourself, you know it’s going to be fun but…

…even though logically you know the slow climb to the top is way more scary than the actual drop…

…waiting on that cusp, where you know you are going to be thrown over, rushing down, your breath is taken away, there is no turning back.

The reality is, as much as you try, you aren’t prepared. You can’t be prepared. You’ve just have to stay present. Stay focused.

You know by the end no matter how scared you were, when it’s done, you’re going to get out safely, jump around with everyone else that was on the roller coaster with you and, yell, “THAT WAS AWESOME!”

So here we go. At least I am not the only one on this roller coaster! We’re ready to…

Wish us…

To all my fellow #abspdm1 alumni!

Daydreaming in Pink

Lysa April 10, 2015 1

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!

Cherry Blossoms (a quilt and a blast from the past)

Lysa March 28, 2015 2

It’s that time of year again, at least here in BC. Cherry blossoms have exploded on the trees. The’re petals litter the grass, enough for a double take where you have to ask yourself, “SNOW??”

It’s also the time of year for the Creative Stitches show. This pretty little flower belongs to one of my first quilts I entered at the Creative Stitches back in 2011. I blogged about it back in the day here. Talk about a blast from the past!

On this baby sized quilt, the flowers were detachable, they could be moved around and played with.

At the time I did dream of having a plump little baby pose, laying on the quilt happily touching one of the flowers with their fingers. Sadly, I didn’t know anybody with a baby at the time. It might have been for the best that I didn’t or I may have had to rename the quilt “Choke Cherries”! or “Choking alert! Choking alert”! Being a mom you’d think I’d know better than to put bite sized choking hazards all over a baby quilt. Needless to say it was a pretty decadent baby quilt, like those baby tu-tus.

I was super proud of the rounded corners and my binding!

I don’t know if I’ll see you at the Creative Stitches Show this weekend. If I don’t, I hope you have a lovely spring and you get a chance to enjoy a fresh breeze in your hair, warm sun on your cheeks, along with oodles of blossoms that remind you something new is just around the corner! I wrote that just to make my husband roll his eyes. What can I say, spring makes me sappy. And I don’t mean that in a punny way. It truly does. Again, happy spring!

cherry blossoms quilt

What does #sewinglikeamothertrucker have to do with; Mixed Cassette Tapes, Robert Kaufman, Carolyn Frielander and a FVMQG Mini Quilt Challenge? (Oh and a marriage proposal)

Lysa March 20, 2015 9

This! This quilt right here. It embodies all those things smashed in together! (Hang on, the explanation about the marriage proposal comes later)

I knew going into this project I only had three days to finish it. It absolutely had to be finished and submitted by the end of day 3! Which meant, I was going to be #sewinglikeamothertrucker.

Someone once said to me, “So let me get this straight? You buy fabric, cut it up, and sew it into new fabric?” YUP! That’s about right, a totally sane thing to do, if you ask me. (…and I have a sneaking suspicion you’ll agree)

Translation for non-sewers. This pile of tiny cut fabric means progress! Day two of sewing like a "Mother Trucker!"

Back in November 2014, our guild the FVMQG were given a mini quilt challenge for March’s Creative Stitches Show (March 27-28, 2015). We were given six Robert Kaufman solids and three Carolyn Friedlander fabrics. We were allowed to add RK solids and more prints from the same designer. (Thank god for Spool of Thread who carries all of RK solids!)

When I accepted this challenge I had no idea that mid January I would be in design school studying the Art and Business of Surface Pattern design. No idea, at all, that just kind of fell into my lap. (Note to self, I still need to blog about that)

Then Christmas happened. By then I knew the whole studying surface design was going to happen. I did have a working list of stuff that NEEDED to happen before my course started! This quilt was on that list. Needless to say, it didn’t get finished but I figured I still had time after the first module was completed to finish it.

Actually, at the February FVMQG meeting I was quite relieved to see so many RK challenge quilts completed since two of the quilts were directions I was going to take. That would have been like showing up at a party wearing the same dress. How embarrassing would that have been!

We were told at the guild, ONLY if we had a freak accident, like both of our arms were broken, would we have a good enough reason not to have our challenge quilts done. Fair enough, doing a challenge for Mr. RK is a big deal. There was no way I was about to let anyone down.

My husband was a superstar and took the reins at home while I hunkered down in the studio cutting, sewing, (cringe) seam ripping, plotting my way through twists and turns, and inevitably killing my playlist as I listened to it over and over.

From the beginning of this project I posted about it on Instagram. Which is where #sewinglikeamothertrucker came from. People started following my progress, likes and comments started to roll in. All of them encouraging, some downright hilarious.

holy-shit-balls-IMG_1974

They gave me huge gusts of wind (… not that kind of wind, wait for the rest of the sentence…) under my sails. (I know what you were thinking!)

Did I mention that this quilt needed to be completed by March 1st… and that I had to submit a second quilt AND submit a graduation piece for Design School too… Oh, and that we were leaving for San Francisco March 2nd? Sounds pretty crazy when I type it out like this.

In the end EVERYTHING got submitted (both quilts and my graduation project). We were packed and prepared to leave for the airport the next day. Phew!

Two empty spools, one dull blade, one empty roll of tape, one new ball of tape, ridiculous amounts of scraps... well, I guess that's what you get when you're #sewinglikeamothertrucker

What I wasn’t prepared for was, after submitting everything, at 8:35pm, I took my last picture posted it on Instagram, by the time we were ready for bed the quilt had receive over 50 likes! 50 likes c’mon! My mind was blown. For having 300ish followers, that was unreal.

Comments were coming in left right and center…

cool-shitIMG_1994

By the time we woke up, it was up to 100! Whaaa? And oddly enough we discovered the quilt had um… some marriage proposals. Yup, people wanted to marry it!

marriage

I love fabric-y people!

WEB-Blue-IMG_3490

By the time we had gotten to San Francisco the likes were up to 200 likes with more comments, many requesting a pattern. Plus more requests for patterns of other stuff I had posted on my feed. Which I’m totally excited to do! Ka-Boom! That’s my brain and the gratitude I feel.

So there you go, that’s what #sewinglikeamothertrucker has to do with mixed cassette tapes, Robert Kaufman, Carolyn Frielander, a FVMQG mini quilt challenge and… a marriage proposal.

WEB-Orange-IMG_3489