HAVE A HAPPY AND BLESS NEW YEAR! I WILL SEE YOU NEXT YEAR.

five more

here are five more that i have been working on. i have about two or three more to make. these will be gifts that i will be giving out. if i can get a picture of my aunts dog i will try to do a animal, wish me luck. i still have a little problem picking out shades of colors. messed up a couple of time and had to start over. i still have not been able to do my husband yet, because he has a goatee and i can not figure out how to do the facial hair on his face. i will get it soon or later. i also have to finish my challenge quilt and alter fabric swap by the 19th. i hope you like what i have done so far.

stitches

yetunde

this is me!

yes this is me and i am loving it. i have always want to try this and once i purchase adobe element 8, this was the first thing that i tried. and i love it. i am working on doing some more and my next challenge for 2010 is to do flowers.

i am taking two class at a retreat in 2010 that will be teaching how to do portrait quilts. what ever they teach me i am willing and ready. i want to learn all the little short cut or anythings to improve what i am doing now. i was afraid to do my hair, since i have dreadlock and i could not figure out how to do the hair. i still have not gotten the quilting of the face the way i want it. and i am still trying to figure out how to stop the invisible thread from breaking. i still have alot to learn about portrait quilts. so right now it is try and error. so let me get back to trying to do another one since it is snowing in maryland and i am in the house and have time to sew.

stitches

yetunde

So many projects

so many projects and so many mix review. for the month of december i have two or three projects due. i am in a xmas stocking gift swap and i am having a hard time figuring out what to give to 18 quilting friends. when i really don't have any money. so i am buying gifts and making gifts. the next
project is a fabric altered page swap. i am making two set of 14 page swap. the pages that i am making are coming out really nice. i have seen a few of the other pages that some of my friends have made and the swap should turn up some really nice pages. the last project is a purple challenge quilt that is being challenge by the quild that i am in. this project is where the mix reviews come in. i used purple scraps that i had, ribbon, and beads to make this quilt. i have some friends and family who don't like it because they don't understand it. they say that this is not my style. my granddaughter is one the people who love it. and want to put it in her room. i call it purple rain. for my personal opinion, i love it and enjoyed making it. because this is a abstract piece and this is something that i don't do, people ask who made it. right now i don't care if anyone likes it or not. my granddaughter likes it and she has never asked for a quilt from me. so this will be her xmas present, plus a camera from me. here is a picture of the uncompleted quilt. i still have to finish the binding and finish adding

beads. this is not a good picture, you can not see the quilting in this picture and that is what make this quilt so different. the quilting is beautiful. that is what makes this quilt.
stitches,
yetunde

mud cloth class

i took a mud cloth class today and it was great. we actually used mud to design our pieces. i appreciate mud cloth more, since i know the process of making mud cloth. you are using the mud to paint your design onto the cloth. the instructor used mud from all over the world, my two favorite colors were red and black from maryland. you would paint, dry, rinse and them repeat this about three more times. the more you repeat this the darker your colors will look after they are dried.

the first picture is from one of the student in the class, the next picture is from the instructor, the third picture is my piece unfinished and the others are some of the other students in the class. it was a nice workshop. am going to start collecting dirt now. the dirt has sit in the water for a year for the best result for color, but can be used earlier.

the instructor's name is kathye edwina arrington. you can see an interview on youtube. go to youtube and type wskg 2/14 and look for kathye edwina arrington. her artwork is very nice. enjoy!

Stitches,

yetunde

don't pay to be cheap

yes i am telling you not to be cheap. i have made several sweatshirt jackets in different styles and decided to make a jacket for my mother. but this time i did not pay 15 dollars or more on this sweatshirt. me trying to be cheap paid 4 dollars for a x-large sweatshirt, and guess what, i haven't even finish it and it is too small, around the shoulder and the arm area. now i did say i have made several jackets out of sweatshirts and this is the first time that a jacket is to small. i got this sweatshirt in the men's section at the dollar store. i have learn my lesson and won't be cheap again. now i will have to find this brown fabric strips, i think it was a hoffman brand call cappuccino, i got it at quilt show. i hope i can find it at a quilt shop close by. these are the colors that my mother like. i don't even want to finish this jacket. so don't be cheap like i did. just a little tip from me.

stitches,

yetunde

ps

in a couple of day i will rant about cats and quilts. so cat lovers please don't hate a sistah.

free motion quilting

for those of you who like to do free motion quilting check out on the right hand side of my blog INSPIRING PLACES and go to 365 DAYS OF FREE MOTION QUILTING and PATSY THOMPSON blog site these lady's will inspire you to do more free motion quilting. i am having fun at their blog. check them out it won't hurts.

stitches

yetunde

my doodling art

last week at work, after i had finished my work, i started doodling on some paper. i realized that it was looking nice. so i thought maybe i could do this on fabric. i photo copy the picture onto photo fabric but the picture was not sharp. so i doodle the picture onto fabric. first i had to try different ink pens to see which pen would not bleed through the fabric. canvas fabric seem to work but i didn't like the fact that the fabric is not smooth looking. so i doodled onto a roll of photo fabric. and it worked ok, but now i have to buy some more photo fabric on a roll and no one seem to carry photo fabric on a roll around here any more. so it looks like i will have to order the roll of fabric. i kind of like doing this so i also did some adinka symbols. now i am try to decide how i am going to quilt this or add some kind of boarder to what i have done so far. i cut the lady out and fuse the lady onto black fabric.

stitches

yetunde

another UFO completed

here is another UFO that i have completed. what i had was some red work patterns that i got from a quilt flea market. i did the pieces with black thread instead of red and didn't know what to do with them. and a couple of weeks ago i had some of my sistah quilter friends over for a cook out and i showed them another unfinish african red work piece i had been working on and was thinking about teaching it at the retreat we had in april. everyone said i should have taught it at the retreat. i didn't think anyone what to do any hand work at the retreat, so i taught thread painting. but now i find out that i was wrong. after listening to them i decide to find my other pieces and complete the quilt and this is what i have. it is call MOTHERLAND.

enjoy stitches,

yetunde

PASSION

passion
yesterday i went to a lecture to see faith ringgold, http://www.faithringgold.com/ a quilt artist. her work is just beautiful. listening to her made me realize that i was not wrong about how i feel about my quilting. i do not miss one day without working on a quilt. she stated that she has to feel the quilt; she has to have that passion to make it. if i don't have that passion in me, i can't make it. when i had a year to make the slave quilt, that quilt was not in me to make. i did not feel the passion or see a view of how to go about making this quilt. the passion and idea on how to make this quilt did not come to me until four months before it was due. i could see and feel what needed to be done to make this quilt. others had confidence in me and knew that i could make this quilt. but i did not have that passion and confidence to do it. i am the type of person who once have an idea for a quilt and that passion is their, i can complete that quilt in a day or two or less than three weeks. when i made blood on your hands, about the girls kilt by the hands of their mother their was truly a passion in me to make that piece. if it is more than a month, i loss the passion to completing it. but there are times when i will completely stop working on a piece and stare at it for days and try to figure out what is missing and how can i make it better. once i figure out what is missing the passion is even more there for me to get it just the way i want it. and it gets completed. i love quilting so much that a lot of my idea doesn't get made because my passion on how to make something has not come into vision for me. there are quilts out there that i want to make but i just don't know how to make them the way i invision them.

quilting is my passion!

stitches,

yetunde

PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE

i finally finished my people are people quilt. i was trying to do the wording by machine and it was really looking crazy. so i did the wording by hand. i truly believe that people are people no matter what color they are. this piece was fun making and i have a few friends who want me to make patterns for them. all i have to do is print the pictures that i drew and explain how i did the people. i don't do eyes, nose or mouth i am not that good at drawing. i would love to learn how to draw more realistic pictures.

here is some good news, a friend sent me a email telling me that roland freeman (author of A Communion of Spirts: African-American Quilter, Preservers, and their stories) was looking for people who made Obama quilt. the congressional black caucus and the mayor's office of dc have asked that the Obama exhitition be extened to the end of september. the show should have ended in july. some of the quilters were not willing to extend their loaner aggreement for another month. and he was looking for about five more quilts to display. so i call and both of my Obama quilts are now in the exhibit. their is one thing i can say about quilters, we do look out for each other.

do you remember these two pieces. of all things i don't think these are my best pieces.

Donnette thanks for tell him about me.

stitches

yetunde

people are people

i am working on a piece call people are people. i will show the completed piece in a couple of days. i came about making this piece because as i was growing up, i was seeing how people were treating people just because they were different. because of the color of their skin, because they are gay, disable, or their beliefs are different from theirs. some of these feels are still among us. people still hating. but then their are people who just see people as people and that is what i try to see in people. i try not to judge, but it is hard when you see things that you know are not right out here in this world. people are people know matter what color or who they are.

stitches

yetunde

this is what i have been doing

twisted sister thread painting challenge

well i had to get a new laptop. the old laptop crashed again. so while i didn't have a computer for a couple of weeks, this is what i have been doing. i made a quilt for my niece. a quilt pattern call twisted sister. i am not good at following patterns but this came out pretty good. and i used a long arm quilting machine to do the quilting. and i loved it, i can not wait to make a larger quilts to quilt on the long arm machine.

i also completed the thread painting mask, i was working on. i had fun doing that. during this time i also practice doing machine quilting stitches. like the feather stitch on a quilt, which i am still have problems try to get perfect. i want to practice quilting patterns so that when i work on the long arm, i will feel comfortable working on it. while working on the long arm, i saw things that i needed to improve on. so i just want to practice, practice doing pattern for the long arm quilting.

while i was at my family Reunion, i had a friend submitted a quilt for me, in a quilt challenge in the family day community festival. this is a festival that the quilting bee that i am in participate in. it is a quilt challenge and the community vote for the best. my quilt won first place. the theme for this challenge was music. i did tons of bead work on this piece. my husband told me that i better not sell this one.

a friend of a friend ask me if i would put some of my quilts into their quilt show that they are having next friday at their church. this will be their second quilt show. they are a small quilting bee and they would like to have a couple of art quilt on display. they are more traditional quilters. and she want something a little more different from what they do. if you are in the dc area come by Union Temple Baptist church on W street se. friday july 31, 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm. i have never seen any of their work so i don't know what to expect. i was told that they are a beginner iwho also sew in this group. so if you have time stop on by and give these ladies some encouragement.

stitches,

yetunde

INSPIRATION

This is for Linda, about a week ago, linda asked me where do i get my inspiration to quilt. and the explanation that i gave her, i don't know if she understood what i was trying to tell her. i realize that i get my inspiration from life. what i see around me. just seeing what is around me gives me inspiration to quilt. i get my ideas from just looking at things, sometimes ideas come from dreams. i am just coming back from a trip and while i was on the train i was looking out the window and looking at the trees. i love looking at trees in the fall because of all the different colors of the trees. but i never realize that when i look at the trees, i don't see to many flowers. but on this trip all the trees were green and i was wondering where are all the flowers. and the next thing i know i am thinking about making a quilt with flowers and trying to work threadplay into this quilt. i also get my inspiration from other quilters. i love quilt shows and i love seeing other quilter's work on the Internet. seeing their work inspire me to try things, or try things another way that i am already working on. the inspiration to make this quilt was inspired my you linda, because the whole time that i was working on this i was think about the question you asked me and this quilt is call INSPIRATION.

I HOPE YOU LIKE MY GARDEN OF FLOWERS

Stitches

yetunde

thread painting

this is what i am working on right now. since january, i had decided that i would do journal quilt pieces for a year and that they would all be thread painting pieces. i want to see how much of a progress i can do by the end of the year. this piece is coming out pretty good, it will be finish in a couple of days. for the last couple of months i have been working on a couple of pieces. take a look at what i have been doing.

i hope i can get better.

stitches,

yetunde

sell or no sell

this is a piece that i showed at the retreat and someone wants to buy it from me. the problem is that i really like this piece. this piece i truly believe that i would put in a show if i had the chance to do. the person really want to buy if from me. she said that she told her husband about the piece and how she wanted to buy it from me. i told her that i am still trying to decide because if i sell it to her and then later want to put it in a show, she might not give it to me to put in a show. that is one thing about selling a piece to someone when you might want to show that piece later in a show. how do you go about doing this, and what if a show last for six month to a year. how are we suppose to work this out. their is a lot i have to think about. and what if i tell her that i want to sell it to her in late 2010, would she be willing to wait that long. and then again i can tell her that i am not ready to sell it yet, but she will be the first person i look for when i am ready to sell it. i really have to think about this. when this piece was hang up at the retreat everyone was asking who made this piece. i must say it did look. i never actually looked at the piece untill someone said something.

this piece was done all by hand. hand quilted and hand embellished i did a little pencil shading in some area's. the fabric was hand dye and i love it. i brought it at a show. i want some more of this fabric. i have tried dying fabric and my fabric never looked like this. grace if you are reading this, i have your piece of dye fabric that i won from your blog in this quilt. check out her blog people. (BARNYARD CHATTER) reading her blog and reading blackthreads convence me to try blogging. i was always afraid to try doing things on the computer. still kind of new at it, but it is getting easier. if you want to blog just do it.

stitches,

yetunde

the retreat was a success

the reason i was not posting anything was because i was trying to complete everything before the retreat and not tell you that i was one of the instructor for the retreat. i taught the thread play class, it went well and i was scared sh@tless.

the classes that i took, i kept messing up. i was doing everything wrong. in the picture piecing class i had to color code a floral picture to correspond with my fabric and i was coloring the picture and color coding with the color of the pencils and not the fabric. and their were a lot of tiny pieces. i had to start all over. in the needlepoint class, i was stitching the word love and the L was in the right place the O was up to high, the V was to low and looked like a U and the E, i don't know if it was trying to be a E or a fancy C. i should have wrote the word on the fabric and not try to do it free hand. i gave up and decided to to work on an unfinished vest that i found while i was looking for ugly fabric to auction off at the retreat. i kept changing color threads to top stitch the vest, so i just put that to the side. but after i did my class, i was able to come back and correct some of the things that i had done wrong in the other classes that i had taken.

my class went very well. there were a couple of people who were more advance than others and then their were some that i had to go slow with. my brake down of how to show the class how to do something, i was told i did very well explaining. there was one student who took my handout and follow the instruction by herself without waiting and only asked me one question. she completed the practice sheet in less than a hour and the class was four hours. she didn't do the final project, but she asked if she could leave because she had something else to do and she said that she has the basic and that if she had any problems she could ask me later. she said the class was great. by her completing the handout it showed that the handout was easy to understand. which i was afraid that someone might not understand what i was trying to explain. so i am glad about that because other students stated the same thing to me.

also at the retreat we showed our story quilt that we had a year to work on. i did two story quilts. one was about slavery and the other story quilt was about my childhood. all of the story quilts were great. some of the story's were very personal, some sad, some happy, some about people they admire, and some political. one of the story quilt was a jacket.

here are some pictures of the two story quilts that i did.

i will come back later to tell you more about the retreat and what i have been working on.

stitches,

yetunde

computer crashed

Yes, my computer crashed. no computer for almost a month. i lost everything on my computer. i have taken this laptop back twice and i am still trying to set up my computer back the way it was. i have lost pictures of quilts that i don't have anymore and information about how i was feeling when i made them. i am not going to bore you to long this time, because i still have a lot of quilts to finish by the end of this month. the quilt retreat is the end of this month and i still have not finished all of my quilts. so here are two pictures of some little quilts that i am working on. i can show these but the other quilts you will have to wait and see them after the retreat. so take a look. you know i love thread play so i have been playing with that for a while. the sun is from a book that i am trying out and i kind of like it. the authors instructions are very easy. the other quilt is done all my hand and you know i still love doing my hand quilting.

stitches,

yetunde

p.s

for those of you who are going on the retreat, please don't talk about these two pieces to the other quilters who do not read my blog and are going on the retreat.

blog is a plus

well i got a offer from a friend who reads my blog and she wants me to teach a workshop. her guild is having a retreat in 2010 and she wants to suggest that i teach a workshop. the thing is that i am so surprise that she is asking me. she said that i can give her an answer in a couple of months. and they are also willing to pay me a nice little fee. she also gave me good information on how to build a resume up on being a instructor. she had heard that i had done two workshops on fabric postcards and that the students enjoyed the workshop. well the first class, i was scared as hell. but the second time that i did the workshop, i knew what i needed to improve in and the workshop was much more fun. just to let you know it is not going to be another fabric postcard workshop. it is either going to be thread play or applique workshop. all i have to do is let her know. the reason that i don't want to do the postcards is because i am tried of making them. within the last year/half, i have made also 200 postcards. i have only about a hand full of pictures of the cards that i have made. most of the cards were made for service man and woman who were in military hospitals. i had friends and coworkers write on the back of the cards and they were sent to military hospitals to be given out, this was a couple of years ago. i also were in a couple of fabric postcard swaps. and right now it is time for me to move on to something else. i have given other workshops at the quilting bee that i am in, so maybe i can practice my workshop skill on them and see how i do before i give her an answer.

since i have had this blog their have been offers and suggestion from people who i have never thought would take time to even look at my blog. i would like to thank everyone who take a step into my messy blog. i have finally reached over the 4000 readers, reading my blog. THANK YOU AGAIN, AND I HOPE YOU CONTINUE VISITING ME.

stitches,

yetunde

MY QUILT BOOK/ COPYRIGHT

about a year ago one of my sister friends in a quilting group on yahoo, stated that we should keep records of our quilts. that we should put our quilts in a book and send it to the library of congress for copyright purposes. i was using the book called quilt register where you tape or glue picture of your quilts in the book and write information about your quilt. i was doing that for a year and i also kept a journal of my quilts on my computer with pictures of the quilts. two weeks ago while i was working on one of my quilts, i showed someone my quilt register book. pictures were falling out of my register quilt book. she suggested that i make a quilt book. that way pictures would not fall out of a printed book with my quilts. she stated that her son made a book from pictures of her wedding annversary. she showed me the book and i liked what he did, so i tried it out. and i am very please with what i made. their are a couple of family members who want to buy it. the site that i use does not give you the option to sell your book and make a profit. you can buy it from their site. but another site that i tried does give you this option, i just did not like their template. it was hard to work with, it does print in the book that you are the copyright person to the book and its pictures. the site that i use did not print this in my book. so i do feel that i still have to have my work register for copyright. i will have to check out how i can sell this book if i get a great demand from family and friends. i really was not trying to sell this book, i only just wanted to have a record of my quilts. i feel that there should be some type of record, to show that someone made this quilt or that quilt. i feel that a 100 years from now if i am not a famous quilter at least someone will know that i made these quilts because i have it documented in a book or a couple of books. their will be other books as i make more quilts.
check out a couple of pages in the book.














on the back of the book it say:
'this is not the end this is only the beginning
stitches'

yetunde

ROLLING ALONG

the postcard workshop went very well. i have been asked to give another postcard workshop at the guild that i go to. this first workshop has showed me things that i need to change and improve in to give a better workshop. i am going to make notecard to help me when i do another workshop. we had great fun making the cards and i was told that i did very well explaining how to make the cards.

as i promise myself, i have started working on the quilt that i was to have started months ago. well, it is finally looking pretty good. it is a story quilt, something that i have never done. during the inauguration week i worked on this quilt and looked at the inauguration on the tv and sewed all day. i also worked on a stained glass quilt of president obama. one of my quilting friends email me a free pattern of a stained glass pattern of president obama. she felt that i could make it into a quilt so i tried it. also here is the website if you want to try to make it yourself. http://chantal-stainedglasspatterns.com/2barack-obama.html they also have other free stain glass patterns. during this time i also worked on other quilts. those four days off, just rolled along so smoothly for me, my creativity was just rolling along and i better take all of this creativity and keep these fingers going. so check out my work.

stitches for now

yetunde

HELLO 2009

2009 is here and i already have too much to do in the next few months. the obama quilt is finish and it will be shown at the Miller Senate Office Building, 11 bladen street, annapolis, maryland. the building is open monday - friday(excluding holidays) from 9-5. the exhabit is through february 28, 2009. this is the Uhuru Quilters Guild presenting an american sampler, an exhibit of quilts celebrating patriotism, inauguration, and african american history on the third floor gallery.

sunday january 11th was the opening of the Quilts for Obama exhibit, at the historical society of washington, dc. 801 k street, nw, until january 31, 2009. some of the artist are marlene o'bryant, donnette cooper, sew chick elle, roland freeman, carolyn mazloomi, laura gadson, and sonja just to name a few. also Michelle obama family quilts are also on display at this exhibit. i truly enjoyed this exhabit. there is also an exhibit in silver spring, maryland, called President Obama: A celebration in Art Quilts: and will take place february 9- march 5, 2009 at the cafritz art center, 150 king street, silver spring, maryland (just outside washington, dc). this is the one i wanted to try to get in, but i was sick with the flu and had the wrong info about entering, so i just went and put mine into my guild exhibit. if you are in the dc area check it out.

this month i was also drafted into teaching a class on making fabric postcards. i don't know a thing about teaching a class, this will be the 24th of this month. i am trying to go to all of the exhibits to inspire me to get started on two quilts that i need to be completed by the end of april. i have bits and pieces on my design wall, but my brain just won't let me put these quilts together the way i want. i will try at it and then don't like it. i have started one quilt three times and just can't get it. i see now that i hate for someone to give me a topic or subject on a quilt to do, because i see that i just don't work that way. i have to feel it and when i feel it, i can in vision on how to do it and do it. it is just not happening right now, and they have given me a whole year to do this. one of the quilts is require of me to have completed to participate in a retreat in april. the other one i can push until june, this is not me. i am not like this, most of the time i am either the first or second person completing a challenge that was request of me. but this challenge is killing me. when i see the person that gave me this challenge, i say hi to her and then i say i hate you and she just laugh. and tell me that she know that i am going to produce something wonderful. yeah right, if she only knew. i am looking at this stupid design wall now and just want to throw this mess away and hide. believe it or not i am working on a piece right now for the retreat, sorry i can't show it, but is pretty nice looking. if only its could have been for the challenge, but it is not. ok, i feel stress out and i am going to stop looking at this stupid design wall and try to work on it this weekend.

i still have a few more things to do but i will talk about that another time.

so stitches

yetunde