Lysa Flower's Daily Designer Diary : : illustration

Find the Calm in the Chaos:: a change of background was the answer!

Loving the text, not loving the Easter!

Hmm, I wanted this to be different than the LET GO illustration.

Trust me, the irony of how much I had to wrestle with this illustration was not lost on me. I won’t lie, I was feeling uncomfortable with how much time it was taking! I took a bit of a break and started to play with it again after some feedback from my husband and my Monday co-working group of fellow artists.. Above is what I came up with.

I’m finding gardening every morning very satisfying and to quote Blur in Park Life, “It gives me a sense of enormous well-being”. It’s also basically manual labour and switching tasks isn’t fatiguing for my brain. However, yesterday my son asked me to watch a YouTube video about productiveness (mostly I was listening because I had no idea what I was looking at in this League of Legends Streamer’s video). I LOVE what he had to say! And I loved even more that our 20 year old, was listening to him (saying stuff we’d been saying for some time now-ha! parenting!). Needless to say I love learning about ways to be more productive and my favourite Huberman Lab Podcast episode is with Dr Cal Newport: How to Enhance Focus and Improve Productivity. Which this steamer mentioned! See Kiddo, your mom is COOL! Ha!

This is the square version.

Since then I’ve been wondering if I’d be happier dedicating a full day to design work, not just mornings. Knowing my time is up at lunch makes me feel a bit chaotic and it’s hard to relax into the design process. The brain change is well, a bit distracting and taxing.

Either way, I worked on this illustration today after knowing it could be better and I didn’t want to settle with just alright. I thought, maybe I need to change the background? I loaded up the Endless Summer repeat and YEP! There it is! YES! I KNEW IT!

This is the 8x10 inch version

So to recap, last year after I had designed the Goin’ Surfin’ collection (after camping and surfing) I assumed, yep, that’s what this collection is about. Nope. It wasn’t until it was done that I realized for the last two years our lives had been turned upside down. We were sinking and taking on water. Our lives were total chaos. Think of the movie, “Everything, Everywhere all at Once” , that was us. Then, in the middle of it, and with help from the good people at The Foundry, we found the calm. Much, much needed calm in all that chaos.

My hope is that everything in your life never gets wildly out of control like ours did. However, if it does, please know this illustration is dedicated to bring you comfort & support.

Eventually it all gets done. Right?

My husband and I both turned 40 the same year. We wanted to do something to mark this milestone. He jumped out of a plane. I took a Denyse Schmidt workshop in Portland.

I didn't even know what the workshop was about... I thought maybe we were doing log cabins. It didn't even matter to me. I showed up with my two toned fabric and started the workshop making perfectly pointy pinwheels. Then we were instructed to deconstruct them. Wha huh? Okay. I was pleased with the experience but life happened and the blocks from the workshop were tucked away. 

Skip forward two more years. Back then I was still coordinating workshops for the Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild. We brought in Barb Mortell again. She had previously taught our guilds first workshop back in 2011 or 2012. This time she was teaching us all about triangles. I had known Barb for sometime and asked if I could go rogue and do my own thing. She said 'go for it'. What I remember most about this workshop (which was two days of intense sewing) was feeling like I had found my voice in colour among all those triangles.

I finished sewing the triangles together shortly after Barb's workshop. Last summer I put the wide boarder on and had it quilted by Bev Funk. I'm not sure where my motivation came from but recently I've been finishing up old projects. I didn't sign up for any finish alongs but darn it I should have! Oh well... Either way I'm happily satisfied with the quilt. It feels great to get one project done!

Now only 1,293,286 unfinished projects to go!

Who Inspires You?

Have you ever come across someone who just, in your gut, inspires you. I've been fascinated with punk lately (trust me this is going somewhere). Not the mohawk hairstyles, torn and safety pinned back together clothing or even the healthy drug appetites of Sid and Nancy but the DIY movement that was born out of it. And if DIY (Do It Yourself) is punk, see those two ladies holding up quilts, (Mrs S is on the left and Mrs Mac in on the right.) then they should be punk royalty.

Here's the simplified version: In the 80's they couldn't find a school to teach their dyslexic children so they started one. It became James Cameron School (which also accepts kids with other learning disabilities too). Think about that. They started a SCHOOL! Who does that? They started with 8 kids in a basement and grew a whole school, learning as they went. Making HUGE differences in the lives of families and children. They allowed these kids to thrive after wilting in the regular system. Humbly, when I asked them, mind boggled, How? Mrs. S replied, "You just do."

You just do.

Not everyone does that.

But they did. 

Appropriately, the slogan of the school is " Changing I Can't, to I can!" These ladies inspire me to go  forward, with no guarantees and give it all I've got. To just do.

Gaw, it makes me want to give them big smooches on their cheeks! But since that might be some what inappropriate, I made them each a quilt. Because you know us quilters, if we love you, you get a quilt.

So it's official, I love them! Do you have someone in your life that does that for you. Maybe they don't even know. Who gets the fire in your belly going and makes you want to just go for it?