I’m a super hero? Nope.

I’m a super fast bow and arrow shooting spy? Well… no.

They just stared up again after their mid season hiatus? Yup, nailed it! And on all those shows after their hiatus they have a recap. You know the part where they say “Previously on…”. Here’s mine (It’s quite long so I’ve broken it into three posts. This is Part I):

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Previously on Lysa Flower… I had just won a portfolio review with Elizabeth Olwen from her Skillshare class, “How to create a Fabric Collection in Two Weeks.” If surface design is something you have a burning desire to do, I highly recommend any of her classes.

QUILTCON! It happened, it was amazing. We ran around the show acting like it was Halloween and ALL the people were giving out full-sized chocolate bars!

Here’s a quick recap of the highlights:

TOP Left: We met Janine Vangool from Uppercase Magazine (OMG! You know how much I love that magazine right?!), Kimbery Knight from Cotton + Steel! (Pinch me did that really happen?) Oh and the cute little red head was our fearless Sherri!

TOP Middle: Note to self, next time take pictures of the quilts AND the LABELS! D’oh! Hand smack to forehead! Luckily Instagram came to the rescue to identify most of the quilts, although I don’t know the name of the quilter from this middle picture. If anyone knows please let me know.

TOP Right: This mini hexi quilt ( 1/4″ hexi’s I might add!) was done by a 14 year old named Sophia Locke.

MIDDLE top: This bridge quilt was a guild challenge. Which Guild you ask? Don’t know. What was it called? Don’t know? I know, so helpful hey?! Labels woman, labels!!

MIDDLE Middle: We found my QUILT!!! Yay! (Check out Sherri’s awesome bag!)

MIDDLE Right: I adore this quilt! It was from Windham Fabrics booth. It was a stunner and they also had the booth covered with paper origami dresses made with all their designer’s prints. Did I mention we met Lotta Jansdotter!!!! Holy Moly!

BOTTOM Left: Hillary Goodwin’s quilt from Entropy Always Wins

BOTTOM Middle: Anna Marie Horners block of the month from Creative Bug

BOTTOM Right: The whole catalyst behind going to Quiltcon was to meet up with my Auntie Caryl (who knew more people there than I did! I guess owning a quilting shop for 22 years will do that). It was wonderful to reconnect with her and I adored our time together!

I made up a little name tag zippy pouch for the occasion (shh… don’t tell anyone but a tutorial is in the works!).

I also made up some #sewinglikeamothertrucker buttons for trade-zees!

This quilt by Alison Chambers summed up up the trip. At 3 am we left my house for Quiltcon. We closed the trip by getting home at 1 am.

My partners in crime Judy and Sherri, Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild peeps!

I was offered one piece of advice going to Quiltcon, never take more than two classes. Which is what I did. Now if I were to add onto that advice I’d say take them early in the weekend when you’re fresh. I loved my two classes but I was so worn out by then. Still super duper fun! I would have liked to have been a bit perkier.

The first class I took was from Lizzy House. Did you know she’s engaged? Anyways, it was really fun to meet her and take a block printing workshop.

The second class I took was a Valori Wells all day block printing workshop. I had come prepared with images from my Snail Mail collection. I had also wanted to take her silk-screening workshop but since I decided in July 2015 to go to Quiltcon they were all full. I was fine with that, feeling lucky just to get into this workshop, until we started playing. Now, it’s firmly on my to- do list!

Lysa Flower trivia, that’s what I studied in art school, printmaking. It was pretty nifty getting back to it.

It could have been the sleep deprivation but it felt somewhat like a dream!

And before I new it, “Wham Bam thank you Ma’am” it was over! I was back home and received this lovely swap package from Amanda. A pretty snazy welcome home if you ask me!

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!

Congratulation Zenna you won the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway! That’s six  Cotton + Steel Fat Quarters and my PDF Hard Cord Core Mini Quilt Cassette Tape Pattern! Thank you to everyone who entered, your comments were outstanding and crazy fun to read!

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)

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.

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!

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…

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!

I love fabric-y people!

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.