ENDLESS SUMMER : : VANS

One of the very best parts of Tofino, other than the beaches and waves, is Tacofino, a parked food truck that serves tacos and my very favourite, Diablo cookies!

So there we were, after a day of attempted surfing (but successful boogie boarding), we thought we’d head into town to Tacofino. As we were driving to it we saw it! The most beautiful van I had ever seen…

The next day we went back to Tacofino for round two, and we also enjoyed ice-cream at Chocolate Tofino. While waiting in line for the ice cream I noticed this chalkboard painting of a van with surfboards stacked extremely high on it (I thought it was funny and took a very fuzzy photo of it). While I didn’t stack my surfboards that high on my vans they definitely influenced mine! Inspiration was everywhere on this trip!

I haven’t even told you about the sunsets yet! They were blazing and reminded me of the Endless Summer movie poster, hence the name for the top left print.

With every collection I love to do a standalone illustration for the name of the collection. While playing with some markers, I came up with the goin’ surfin’ lettering and ended up incorporating it into a tossed goin’ surfin’ van print.

So the moral of the story is, eat Tacofino, it’s good for your health, especially the diablo cookies, as is ice cream at Chocolate Tofino! Oh and yes, inspiration is everywhere… especially in Tofino!

 

PRETTY PLEASED ABOUT PURPLE!

… BEFORE IT USED TO MAKE ME PUKE! Okay well that’s a bit dramatic but it has been on my “No thank you” list for a long time. When I started designing for my Goin’ Surfin’ collection I wanted to push my colour palette and decided now was the time to make friends with purple. I had done it with grey about ten years ago, so I knew it was possible. Have you ever had a colour aversion?

I think A LOT about colour and I’m curious about these aversions. I don’t know what it’s like for you but for me colour is instinctual. I’ve taken all the colour theory courses, but to be honest, I can never remember all the rules. All I know is when I use certain colours or combinations they give me strong feelings that I react to.

I know about the symbolism of colour, which I find surprisingly conflicting for some colours (like yellow which can be both happy and anxious). I know purple is a hard colour to make and that’s why it was reserved for royalty, but that never helped me warm up to it.

Then there’s a psychology to colour but I think it gets muddy with your personal relationship to it. Let’s say a colour was a hot trend when you were a kid, for example avocado green, and you have memories of your mom making you peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as you basked in your avocado green kitchen. You might have warm fuzzy feelings whenever you see avocado green but others might have the exact opposite reaction to it.

When it comes down to it, I think the specific hue is the important factor to making friends with a colour. For example, my father in law and I both love yellow. Except, he loves school bus yellow and I love a bright lemon yellow. To me, it’s not the same colour at all! Kind of like growing up with other Lisa’s in my class room. I didn’t think of our names as the same ever, even though they sounded the same!

So in the end, I searched and found a hue of purple I adored and used in Goin’ Surfin’. Not only did I stretch my colour palette, I finally made friends with purple and I LOVE what it did for this collection, especially my Sunshine Floral! Those pops of purple really made it sing!

 

MAKING WAVES FOR SURFERS!

Designing the waves of this intricate surfer print was one of my favourite design challenges in this Goin’ Surfin’ fabric collection!

Once I got my head wrapped around the repeat, and realized I needed to bring each wave to a point (otherwise it looked like toothpaste, ha, ha!) AND then when I put the surfer silhouettes on the waves, it was pure joy!

Then of course I played with ALL the colours (my very favourite thing to do!)! While I didn’t end up using the pink and yellow waves for the surfers I did end using it for the base of the sunshine floral!

In the end we went with the above colourways. ALL of them I’d LOVE to swim in! Or Surf! :D

 

SUNSET (STRIPE)

Just a heads up: if I’m working on a collection, you might end up in it!

…Sometimes collections come out of unexpected places. Last summer I’d been working on a new collection when an opportunity to go camping with some friends in Tofino popped up. We’re hotel-ers not campers, but we went for it anyways. Little did I know, taking this break would become a breakthrough for my collection too!

Tofino had these amazing sunsets on its beaches, and with these beaches came surfers, walkers, dog walkers, bikers and sometimes surfer bikers (he’s my favorite!)… which is how this SUNSET (STRIPE) print came to be!

 
 

What would be your best ROAD TRIP song?

It was an epic week, we covered a lot of ground on our road trip to Alberta. Less hand sewing happened than I had hoped but lots of reading. I brought along the latest issue of Uppercase magazine (appropriately titled). I also brought along my Uppercase Feed Sacks book. It's part of an Encyclopedia set that Uppercase is publishing. Which reminded me of the feed sack blocks I bought from a lovely couple when I was at Quilt Markets this past spring, Carolyn and Don Springer. Gosh they were sweet (notice the book on their counter). 

Speaking of shopping, I picked up a copy of Kathleen Riggens, Diary of a Swirl when I was at the Sewing Center in Camrose. I also had this plan, if I only bought fat quarters, I wouldn't buy/spend as much. WRONG. Oh my god so wrong. <hand smack to forehead>. 

I also stopped in to Chapters at West Edmonton Mall and found a Love Patchwork and Quilting magazine! They can be so hard to find since they carry only two copies at a time. I was very tickled to see Kerry Goulder's spread! Plus Felice Regina's AND Lindsey Neil's projects! I'm such a fan girl! These ladies have it GOIN' on!

BUT definitely a highlight of my trip was meeting up with my high school textiles teacher (I'm not going to lie, it was so weird calling her by her first name). I adore this lady, Karen (yep, still weird!). Her class was my happy place and her encouragement went a long, long way! Teachers out there... you do amazing work and it stays with us for the rest of our lives! Don't get me wrong, stay in school kids but I'd argue, for me Textiles (and art class) were the most important classes. My husband is in the photo too he went to the same school! Our own little reunion!

So there you have it, all wrapped up in a nutshell. The whole trip. And of course we listened to A lot of music. I found this 50 best road trip article. I don't think I'd say their number one track would be my choice. Mine would be a tie between Johnny Cash's I've Been Everywhere, Cyndi Lauper's I Drove All Night (does she age?), Cake's The Distance and Ray Charles's Hit the Road Jack. Which I oddly associate with Shake your Booty... I'm not sure why. As a kid I thought they said boobie which to me was was HI-larry-ous! And if I was really honest, I still do! 

BOOMBOX PATTERN COMPLETE! WOO HOO!

It's done. Holy smokes! It's done! The Boombox quilt pattern is done!

WOW! A LOT has happened in the past few months. In February Kim Kight, co-founder of Cotton + Steel, invited me to sew for her new Snap to Grid Spring 2017 Collection! There was (again) A LOT of secret sewing going on-whoa doggie! And then there was Quilt Market! That was a check off my bucket list moment! I'm still processing it all. That lovely lady on the left is Kerry Goulder. She did the awesome #HotSkatesQuilt behind us. I can't wait to make it!

I'm thrilled I can finally share everything with you! One project was my Boombox Sewing Machine Cover. Originally, I had a tutorial planned but then I thought, you know what would be even more fun?! A sew-a-long!! It starts next Tuesday, June 6 and will go for eight weeks. 

To get started, it's easy peasy...

Step 1: Subscribe to my newsletter to receive weekly instructions. New subscribers get 10% off my ETSY patterns! BONUS!

Step 2: Pop over to ETSY (or Craftsy, I'm on there too now. YAY!) pick up the Boombox Quilt Pattern and if you want to make the cassette zippy pouch that goes inside the Boombox, you'll need to pick that up too. 

Step 3: Post your weekly progress to my Lysa Flower FACEBOOK page OR on Instagram using the hashtag #lysaflowerpatterns

Post your completed Boombox sewing machine cover by July 30th midnight PST to either site and win a Sulky Snap to Grid thread pack! It's dreamy.

Please note: for the Boombox pattern it's important to have some experience with paper piecing. 

Any keeners out there? I'll have the schedule written up for next week BUT if you want to get your party started early, the fabric requirements in the quilt pattern are the same for the sewing machine cover, up until the "Face of the Boombox and handle". Stop when you get to there. Until then, enjoy the coloring/planning page! This is going to be, to quote Cypress Hill, "insane in the membrane!" fun! I added the fun part (wink).

P.S. Yes that is a cassette book cover. And yes a tutorial is coming for that too!

 

 

 

#putacassettetapeonit

I've been off the grid lately. I've been in the depths of writing my boombox pattern (side note spellcheck is pretty sure when I write "boombox", I mean boob box... interesting). 

While I've been underground I have been enjoying the notifications from Instagram. It seems people are using my cassette tape pattern and putting them on zippy pouches! So clever! I was chatting with my friend Dana (@danahannah310) about how we should, instead of Portlandia's "put a bird on it", we should flip it to "put a cassette on it"!

Which brings me to these photos. This is Sherri (@sherrichalke). She's a ray of sunshine! She tested the Hard-core Mixed Cassette Tape Pattern and  when she was done the mini quilt, she used the cassette pattern pieces and combined them with Sonja Callaghan's (@artisania) bag pattern (second, side note: Sonja taught me how to paper piece!) Sherri and I went to Quiltcon 2016 together and I must say the bag was quite the hit. But I think also because of her sun shiny smile!

 

 

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!