SUMMER PROJECTS

Some of my favourite summer moments growing up were at my grandma's farm. I especially loved being given embroidery kits (probably to help keep us out of trouble!). I'd like to share with you a few projects put together by my friends that may help you or help keep someone you're spending the summer with keep out of trouble *wink!

Top row:

1.Embroidery Kits from Sheri of Whole Circle Studios

2. Zippy Pouch Kits from Sheri of Whole Circle Studios

3. Truffelkins Coloring Poster 24 x 36 inches Myra of Fuzzy Little Mangos

Middle row:

4. Cut & Sew Trufflekins from Myra of Fuzzy Little Mangos

5. DIY Paint Kits from Nelani of Owlina

6. Gist Curious, a new Instagram page ful of fun facts from Nelani of Owlina (keep an eye on her, I know what she’s got cookin’ and you’re going to love it!

Bottom row:

7. My FREE Cassette tape PDF tutorial (the Cassette Tape PDF Quilt Pattern is required) *allows to make multiple sizes

8. My FREE Matchbook Needlebook PDF pattern

9. My FREE Cassette Tape Book Cover PDF tutorial ((the Cassette Tape PDF Quilt Pattern is required) *allows to make multiple sizes

Happy summering and making!

 

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!

 

I THINK FRIDA WOULD APPROVE OF A DOUBLE SCOOP. DON'T YOU?

This picnic quilt was ONE SCOOP, created from a Katie Peterson workshop. It was put on by the Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild this past February. Katie was warm, knowledgeable and loves pom-poms (you gotta love that!). If you're a guild looking to book some workshops I highly recommend Katie's. Fun fact, the morning of the workshop Kim Kight :: Cotton + Steel had contacted me on Instagram asking if I'd be int interested in sewing with her spring line for quilt market! My brain was all over the place that day. It was lucky this quilt became a thing! It was quilted by Christine Johannink @christinejohannink. 

The SECOND SCOOP that created this quilt was the inspiration. See that Makers Tote?! It was sewn by my lovely friend, pattern editor and partner in crime, Jonna @bespokeoutlaw. She surprised me with it last summer. She's very attentive to detail and knew I love Frida Kahlo. I'm still floored by it. Someone on Instagram asked me if I knew the names of the colors I used in the quilt. Sadly, I don't (note to self, write names of solid colors in selvages). I did, however, use the Alexander Henry's Esperanza Frida fabric as my inspiration. 

Speaking of ice cream. Have you seen:

My last, but not least, ice cream themed RECOMMENDED TUNES: Spoiler alert songs called Ice Cream Man are not summer-y or very happy, in fact after listening to Tom Wait's ICE CREAM MAN, if he ever tried to sell ice cream I think he'd be arrested. Blur also has a song called ICE CREAM MAN, and again, not very sunshiny BUT check out ONG ONG. It's not about ice cream but they have someone dressed up in an ice cream costume! That counts right?! While the Ong Ong video is cute I realized what I really wanted to listen to was PARKLIFE which I re-discovered has an ice cream truck in it! Bonus!

The two ultimate summer songs, in my humble opinion, are Florence + The Machine's DOG DAYS ARE OVER and alt-J's LEFT HAND FREE. There aren't any references to ice cream or ice cream imagery, however, you could eat one while listening to both. Ooo, a double scoop. And remember Frida would approve {wink, wink}!

P.S. Do you remember Chelsea's Boombox pillow from last week? Guess what? She won FIRST at the state fair! Let's all give her a great BIG high five!

 

A DRY HOT SUMMER, IS NO TIME TO PLAY WITH MATCHES!

Unless... they're made out of fabric and felt, right?! The very first pattern I ever wrote was for my Match Book Needle Books. That was back in 2014. In 2015 I was invited by the Seattle Modern Quilt Guild, who was hosting the Pacific Northwest Quilt Guild Meetup, to do a make and take for their sew-in. Circa 15 Fabric Studio supplied the materials and we made the cutest little match book kits for the Match Book Needle books (perhaps I'm bias, wink, wink!). Since then the pattern has been free and on my site. I've just recently added it to Craftsy as a free pattern now too.

These recent Match Books are mini's. I had scraps of felt and somehow thought they'd be faster if they were smaller. Nope! I would have been better sticking with the regular sized ones. Lesson learned!

Now, I'm going to come out and just say it. I'm ready for fall. I've started longing for it. I've been missing our regular routine. I've grown tired of everyone going in different directions. I'm also looking forward to cooler, sock wearing weather... you see, I really love socks! My lovey friend Reece @reecemontgomery recently gifted me these cassette tape socks. Gah! I'm dying to wear them! The bottom of them say "MIX TAPE"! Check out Woven Pear's nifty site HERE!

And in the theme of longing for fall, I came across these ribbon ABC blocks by Stephanie from @Patchanddot. They're so dreamy and they're free!!! Free I tell you, free! You can download them from HERE.

RECOMMENDED FOR YOUR BACK TO SCHOOL PLAYLIST: One of my all favorite time songs (it almost makes me cry every time I hear it), WE'RE GOING TO BE FRIENDS. SIDE NOTE: I found this interesting video called, HOW JACK WHITE USES COLOR. Perhaps that's why I've always been a HUGE Jack White fan. I'm such a sucker for colour and design!

BOOMBOX SEW-A-LONG WEEK 8 - the cassette tape zippy pouch instructions AND!

Lots of exciting things this week! First: the final week of the BOOMBOX sewing machine cover sew-a-long! This last week was my favorite: the cassette tape zippy pouch (that fits inside the sewing machine cover). You can get the instructions HERE. You'll also need this PDF page for the cassette tape bottom.

If you didn't get a chance to do the sew-a-long, fear not! This fall, I'll be compiling all the instructions into a permanent tutorial that will live on my site. It will be here for you whenever you need it! Don't worry, I got your back. 

Second: You know what else is exciting? Cotton + Steel came out with their 2017 Spring Collections Look Book. I've always loved their Look Books AND now I'm IN one of them. SEE!

Third: My CASSINGLE pattern has been released on ETSY and Craftsy! YAY! To celebrate all this excitement, we're going to have ourselves a give away! To enter, leave a comment here telling me your favourite 80's song. I'll add it to my 80's playlist and I'll post the winners name (and favourite song) on the newsletter next week. BUT wait! You have three chances to win. Leave a comment here, on the Lysa Flower Facebook Page or on Instagram (contest and rules will be posted on Facebook and Instagram by noon tomorrow PST). Good luck!