Um… Where did the week go? This isn’t as far along as I would have liked it to be but I’m glad I stuck it out with the lettering. It has the vibe I was dreaming of. Tomorrow I’ll play with the flowers, the surfers AND hopefully with the colour too! My very FAVOURITE part!
I was wavering on if I should keep make it, “Find Calm in the Chaos” or keep it, “Find the Calm in the Chaos”. In the end I decided to keep it the way it was.
I also played around with the D to make it more like the A. I think I’ll go back to the way it was.
Loving having surfers as the dots in the i’s!
So I broke it. On purpose. Which is my go to when a print or illustration doesn’t quite feel right or too tight. I started blowing out the bottom of the letters and I’m LOVING IT. I’ve also decided to ignore adding surfers until later. These letters have to be JUST right and it’s been a great exercise in pushing my hand lettering. It’s definitely getting closer!
Hmm… That dang F! I’m moving a few things here, a few things there but it doesn’t quite feel right yet. The word “FIND” doesn’t quite have the angle I’d like BUT I did move the angle of the “CALM IN THE CHAOS” which feels better.
I’m wanting this illustration to be able to work at 8x10 and 8x8 inches. So I’m asking myself if I should spread out the surfers? Either way, it’s time to take a step away and have a do nothing day tomorrow. We’re going out to see Big Sugar play their full album full album Five Hundred Pounds tonight and I don’t function well without enough sleep. I think I shall lay in bed with the cats and snuggle instead. I know, it sounds rough doesn’t it!
Yesterday I woke up and felt really in my head. Foggy and grumpy. To get back on track, we hiked up the mountain we live nearby. This spring has been spectacular! The weather was wonderful, sunny and breezy. It did the trick and I was left sweaty and back in my body. Refreshed.
I enjoyed the afternoon and evening in my studio. I added some roundness to the ends of the C, the A, the O, and the S. I made the F smaller and the D larger. I thought it would make more sense since all the other words are like that too. I need to rethink the F, it’s being a bit tricky.
Today I didn’t listen to music but listened to a playback from an online course I’m at taking called the Content Cultivation Course. There were some great nuggets in there!
Want to play a game? Spot the differences! The illustration on the left was at the beginning of the day, the one on the right is at the end of the day. There are 9 differences. The Answers are at the bottom. No peeking!
The playlist for today, I hope you like 100 Gecs!!! :D
And this is what I did this evening: Shout out to my friends Kari (@theprintmakerandherdog) and Tara (Tara.Lee.Bennett) stunning show at @newleafeditions on Granville Island in Vancouver.
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*Answers: On the right illustration:
no surfer on the F
a surfer instead of a flower
a surfer from the left had been moved to on top of the D
no surfer in the right corner
surfer on THE
surfer moved from the M to a dot in the I
surfer now on the C in Chaos
the surfer is larger and between the A and the O
surfer larger and on the S
I always start out with an idea but I know I have to be open enough to let it evolve. Which means a lot of playing. It’s getting closer!
Here’s what’s on today’s April 17th playlist!
While I still need to finesse my lettering, today I played with colour and scale.
There’s still a lot to explore. Mostly, each time I work on something new, I ask myself, “What if I did this instead…?” ALL DAY LONG!
Maybe tomorrow I’ll explore the scale of the background? I’d like to see what it would look like with the font interacting with the waves.
I’m also trying to stick to the Goin’ Surfin’ palette but I’m feeling a little boxed in by it.
Here is the April 16th playlist, I’m loving this new music!
Today I’m trying something new. I’m going to start posting about what I work on everyday and here’s why:
My friend Hana, when she was diagnosed cancer, started going outside everyday. A love of gardening was something we shared, although she was much more enthusiastic about raking leaves than I ever was. Everything about someone getting sick is heartbreaking. When she got really sick, she’d say, when I get better, we’ll get together. All I could do was send her texts, telling her she was in my thoughts and I was sending her love, along with photos of my garden. Knowing she was going outside each day, I decided I would go outside each day too. It was my only way of feeling close to her. I would think of her each morning, knowing she’d be so pleased to see things budding or how busy the bees were on the dahlias.
In November, when Hana passed away, I kept going out every morning, comforted with my thoughts of her while I dug a little over here and I clipped a little over there. I went out with no plan, just what ever felt good to work on that day. I’m out there first thing every morning, rain or shine, anywhere from 10-30 mins every morning. We both live(d) on acreages and there’s always a lot to be done, to the point of being overwhelmed… but now instead of resenting it or feeling like it’s a chore, I crave my time outside. What a wonderful gift of a daily ritual Hana left me.
Then I thought, what if I applied this daily ritual to my personal work. Usually I get a deadline and dive head first in and I don’t come back up for air until I’m done. I do love a good deadline but this way of working has left me depleted in the past and what I’ve been craving is consistency. So here we go, an experiment! Every morning I’ll work on new work, a little drawing here, a little painting there! Here we go!
Today I’m starting a new illustration for the Goin’ Surfin’ collection. It will be called “Find the Calm in the Chaos”. Job one is working on the lettering. I’m taking my LET GO letters and converting them into the letters I need. Which means making eight new letters by making a/an:
Here is the playlist I listened to whilst working away : April 15th, 2024 Ha! Whilst! It’s such a funny word!
Enter to win a Lysa Flower Goin' Surfin' Flat Fat Stack!
Um, what the heck is that?! It's Paintbrush Fabric Studio's, answer to a Fat Quarter Bundle but it's printed all on one piece of cloth, with a super long piece of selvage! (One of my personal favorite perks of a FFSB!) …BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!
ALSO win a surprise gift pack from ME! Lysa Flower (there might be a rumor, it's a little somethin' somethin' from each of my collections in it! But my lips are sealed!)
A Goin’ Surfin’ Flat Fat Stack Bundle!
P.S. If you feel like overachieving and getting some extra entries you can share this reel to your stories and tag us!
All the legal jazz: Giveaway by @lysaflower/@pbsfabrics and is open to everyone, but if outside of North America, the winner will be asked to pay shipping. Giveaway closes on Friday April 12th, 2024 at 11:59 PST. By entering the giveaway you are acknowledging that you are subscribing to emails for Lysa flower, Paintbrush Studio Fabrics. You can unsubscribe at any time.
We will announce the winner in our stories on Saturday April 13th! (So don’t let scammers trick you with fake accounts and ruin our fun!)
I always have an vague idea of what I’m wanting to do with a piece. The journey, like many creatives have written about, is U shaped. Starting at the top of the U: "This is such a GREAT idea! (sketching and inking)". To the bottom of the U: "Ugh! Why is this falling apart in my hands (realizing it feels a little flat)". To climbing up the other side of the U: "Okay, that’s interesting, (breaking it on purpose, pushing the scale super large or super tiny) what if I?… to Wow! I LOVE THIS!".
That U feeling; it’s kind of like riding a wave I suppose... AND like the ability to LET GO of expectations, disappointment, each moment. When I really started to think about it, the need to LET GO might be the purpose of life… Whoa, that got deep fast! All I was trying to say was that I LOVE when hand lettering and patterns go together ;D
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!
… 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!
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
…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!
I’m very excited to introduce my seventh collection licensed to Paintbrush Studio Fabrics called, Goin’ Surfin’. It’s being sold to stores now, so keep a look out at your local fabric store for it soon!
Sometimes collections come out of unexpected places. Last summer I had been working on a 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!
Often when I’ve finished a collection, I realize what it’s really about. Sure this collection is about surfboards, beaches, sand, waves… but to be honest the last two years have been tough on our family. The good news is we all learnt a lot about ourselves, we have all grown and are better for everything that happened. I won’t go into detail but let’s just say, when we were watching, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”, I looked at my husband and said, how is it possible they know this is our life! Minus the hot dog fingers of course.
I realized, especially in the making of the wave print, how important it’s been to let go. Let go of the past, to what we perceived as our future. Let go of expectations. Let go of strangling the moment, instead of letting it arrive naturally.
Even though I never fully stood up on a surfboard, I did catch some waves that took off and it was shocking how fast it was. When that happened I was like, “OH… I get it!”… all I had to do was to let go.
I also realized how important it was to find the calm in the chaos. While trying to learn to surf, waves crash into you, or you fall off your board (there’s a reason they call it the drink!). It can be hard to find your footing, on the board and in the sand. Like our last two years, just as we got up again a new wave would come and crash into us. It was hard for us to catch our breath but eventually we found the calm in the chaos and it’s a beautiful view.
So my hope for this fun summer collection: not only does it fill you with endless inspiration for summer sewing projects, I hope it also helps you let go and find calm in the chaos in this thing called life (imaging those last few words being said like Prince’s Let’s Go Crazy intro!)… and speaking of music, as I do with each collection, I create a playlist early in my workflow. You can listened to my Goin’ Surfin’ playlist HERE.
I had the pleasure of sitting down for an interview with Kiley of Modish Quilter to chat about my journey as a fabric designer.
For me, the path to becoming a fabric designer has been a scenic route and I feel like I’ve accidently, on purpose, landed here, doing this thing I absolutely love. Even if there’ve been a few speed bumps and growing pains along the way. During our conversation, I shared insights into my creative process, from the initial idea to the inspirational playlist, messy ink drawings, to my favorite part, selecting colors in Adobe Illustrator and, oh! So many repeat patterns, which I adore to play with!
As I look back on my journey so far, I know I’m a lucky duck for the overwhelming love and support my retro-modern sunshiny prints and patterns have received. It's truly heartwarming to see how my designs have resonated with collaborators, people, makers & neighborhoods. I enjoy, oh SO much, being able to bring bursts of joy and color into the world, one print and pattern at a time!
I’ve had an absolute blast seeing projects being made with my Drivin’ Down fabric collection. Feast your eyes on these goodies!
LOVE SEW MODERN : : When I first saw Erin’s Radical Cassette Tape Pattern, I knew one day we had to collaborate!
HOLD MY SEAM RIPPER : : Holly’s work is always outstanding and I LOVE watching her process!
THE RETRO QUILTER : : True story, when I was designing Drivin’ Down 9, I had Maude in the back of my mind! Gah! I LOVE those pillows!
This first quilt on the left, called “FAR OUT” and pattern are featured in the Retro issue of Modish Quilting.
If you’re looking for a quick win of a project, Maude’s groovy 70’s Sun Quilt can be found in her shop!
LITTLE LIGHT STITCHERY : : When designing the cassette panel in this collection, I immediately thought of Nicky’s witty embroidery and how great it would be for the labels!
In the photo on the right, she stitched a label that says, “You are unstoppable”. I sewed it into a cassette tape zippy pouch! Stay tuned for more to come! :D
OCTOPURSE : : Daphne also made that flower eye glass snap purse (above right). I couldn’t believe the ALL the awesomeness Daphne made! SO MANY cassettes, eye glasses, and pretty print snap purses! We didn’t preplan the sizes or anything, ‘twas meant to be! Snap purses for EVERYONE!!! Check out her ESTY store!
EMBER CRAFT COMPANY : : My heart leapt out of my chest when I saw Mary’s daughter in this first photo! #1. Hello heart sunglasses! #2 I love her attitude! AND that #llkmackinacisland dress! (pattern by @littlelizardking) ! Could we make it in my size?! #3 and I love how snuggly she makes that #roadtrippinquilt feel! I mean, that’s exactly what they’re made for, right!
MARVELOUS AUNTIE M : : So who picked the very most perfect pattern for this fabric?! Maryanna did with @MountianAirHandmade, Sunnies Quilt pattern (20% off in her shop!)!
LAURA : : SLICE OF PI QUILTS : : And the over achiever award goes to… Laura! Not only did she make her Suitcases Quilt! She also made (with the scraps of the suitcase quilt) her MINI Exploding Heart quilt! Look at those bazillion-tee pieces!!!
WHOLE CIRCLE STUDIOS : : And last but not least Sheri’s Dual Directions Quilt pattern mocked up into a desk table runner. My desk is metal and boy would I ever love one of these!
Hey there, fabric enthusiasts and retro lovers! Buckle up and get ready to hit the open road with the latest and greatest from the imaginative world of Lysa Flower. I'm beyond thrilled to share the news about my fabric collection licensed for Paintbrush Fabric Studio, and trust me, it's a nostalgic journey you won't want to miss!
"DRIVIN' DOWN 9" is inspired by the spirit of adventure, retro road trips, and the thrill of the open highway, this collection is a vibrant celebration of all things groovy and nostalgic with bold patterns, vibrant colors, and designs that echo the free-spirited vibes of a classic road trip. With a palette that mirrors the hues of a sun-soaked horizon, "DRIVIN' DOWN 9" invites you to roll up your sleeves and get creative. Whether you're a quilter, a crafter, a garment maker or someone who simply loves the feel of fabric, this collection is designed to inspire and evoke the spirit of adventure.
Excited to get your hands on "DRIVIN' DOWN 9"? The collection is available and in stores now! Plus don't hesitate to reach out to your local quilt shop or check online to snag this collection.
Happy sewing, and here's too many more retro adventures together! And remember to Keep on Truckin’!
I am delighted to share a piece of my story with you through the Thread & Therapy podcast, for quilters with big hearts. As The Retro Quilter, Maude MacDonald, warmly welcomed me into the chat of Thread & Therapy, I couldn't help but feel an immediate connection. What a joy it was to converse with a fellow enthusiast and maker who sees quilting as more than just a craft—it's a therapy session, and a celebration of the human spirit.
In this episode, I had the privilege of sharing my journey as a parent of a Trans child. Parenthood, much like quilting, is a patchwork of emotions, experiences, and, ultimately, a masterpiece and labour of love. Together, Maude and I delved into the delicate and transformative process of acceptance that my entire family underwent.
I invite you to tune in and listen to my episode on Thread & Therapy. Whether you are a seasoned quilter or someone discovering the joys of stitching for the first time, this podcast is a sanctuary for all who find solace, inspiration, and connection in the world of people, who also quilt.
I also invite you to discover other heartwarming episodes of fellow quilters. Thread & Therapy is not just a podcast; it's an invitation to be part of a community that understands the transformative power of quilting.
Thank you, Maude, for providing a platform where quilters and fabric lovers, with big hearts can come together, share stories, and celebrate the therapeutic beauty of our craft. I am grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this vibrant community, many of whom reached out with support after the podcast aired. It was truly amazing! I thank you and my family thanks you!
