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!

 

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!

 
 

SEWING INSPIRATION + A GIVEAWAY!

Spring is in the air! Which means time to get out the … Le Mini Golf Fabric! Me and my friends took a whack at playing with the Paintbrush Studio fabric... the results… well they just knocked it out of the park! Wait! Or in this case I should say, got a whole in one! Enjoy the inspiration and the makers below!

Lysa Flower : Um, bags are HARD, lol! I have a much greater appreciation for bag makers. This is a pattern I picked up from Oliver + S, called A Day In the Park Backpack Tote. It’s a little hard to see from these photos but I loved the handles also being backpack straps. So Clever! I had fun with the inside pockets of the bag, a little treat for the user. Plus you know my moto: it must be as pretty on the outside as the inside!

Then of course there’s something so lovely about a nine patch basic baby quilt!

I recreated the above triangle quilt (or flag quilt as I like to call it) using most of the prints from the collection. I LOVE how it turned out and how retro it looks!

Luckily our friends had the perfect model for this new collection. She was adorable! Especially in her large golf ball polka dot See Katie Sew, Infant Gold Collar Dress! We excitedly tucked the Flag quilt into her crib and handed her all the toys: flower golf balls, a putter and a score card. I really got into toy making and added a pencil from the scorecard fabric to the green score card. All the toys were made from the Le Mini Golf panel. A tutorial for the putter can be found HERE.

One of my very favourite parts of this collection was the panel. I wanted to create the easiest baby quilt EVAR! Sandwich, bind, done!

But I also had dreams of …

PILLOWS!!! And I absolutely loved how the quilting turned out! I backed each one with a different print from the collection. I did a snazzy little video of it on Instagram!

Arabesque Scissors : I am so in LOVE with Ali’s Compact Carry Bag! She wrote a Tutorial and a Blog post about it HERE.

Rock Baby Scissors : Kristy has an AH-may-ZING Etsy shop!! While it looks like her Sew Together Bag in the photo below is gone, the booklet pouch is still listed!

Ember Craft Company : This girlie is ready!!! She’s got her Sorrento Bucket Hat, her Ferris Bag and she’s standing in front of her Hexie Pop Quilt ready to go! Side note, I was deeply smitten with Mary’s scrappy binding. It inspired ME to give machine binding a go again! And I’m loving it!

Modern Handcraft: Nicole did her Asterisks Quilt - Le Mini Golf version and wrote a blog post about it HERE. I couldn’t get enough of watching it in progress on Instagram! Then to see it styled all dreamy on a bed… PERFECTION!

Marvelous Auntie M: This quilt has over 300 HSTs!!!!! That’s insane and AWESOME!!! Maryanna’s adorable dog Tank, LOVES it when she unpacks her quilts from her longarmer @hellomynameisquilt. You can watch a video of it HERE. How does he do that so perfectly?! He’s such a good quilt dog!

Holly Clarke: Inspired by Argyle golf pants, this quilt may look like two quilts but it's actually only one! And you can see by the second photo the hand stitching she did. She claims she’s never hand quilted before but I don’t know. I think she already looks like a pro!

Joe June and Mae : I had the pleasure of meeting Ingrid in person this year! Right before she was going to Paris! So when I told her about this collection, she was pretty dang excited! Which I was too when I saw the pattern she create for this fabric! C'est manifique!!!

The Zeyer Show : Tara has the cutest little girls who she makes the loveliest clothes for! I remember my mom making a few things for me when I was little, mostly I remember feeling itchy. These are clearly not itchy, which makes me adore these Peony Pattern dresses even more! AND not only is Tara and amazing maker, she also makes the most amazing videos!

A big thank you to all the makers! And for the heaps of sewing inspiration they’ve left us with! AND thank you for being here and sampling my newsletter! Subscribers get to find out about all the good stuff first AND they get 10% off my patterns!

Enjoy all your sewing fun times! Keep #sewinglikeamothertrucker! But wait! Don’t forget …

the GIVEAWAY!

Joining my good friends, Jenni from Nollie + Bean and Sheri from Whole Circle Studio, we are giving away bundle of PDF quilt patterns to celebrate spring!

Included in this bundle is: my never released before “We Got the Beat” pattern! Jenni ‘s beautiful Avalon Quilt pattern (see more details HERE)! Sheri’s Modern Moth pattern (which isn’t even out yet! It releases April 20th, wanna see a sneak peek? Check it out HERE). The giveaway is open until April 8th at midnight EDT. Good luck!