HAPPY KWANZAA

TO YOU

AND

YOUR FAMILY

YETUNDE

lot to do

i have alot to do. so if you are coming in don't stay long. and oh i have the FLU, yes, i said the FLU. so if you get sick for just stick your head in don't blame me. i am trying to finish my obama quilt and my body is just not letting me do that. all i want to do is sleep. my head is so clogged up and my ears are stopped up. i went to the doctor friday and all she said was to drink lot of fluids and rest. what the heck do she think i have been doing for the whole pass week. someone told me to try and take a few vitamin c pills and i kind of think they are helping. i going to take two more tonight and see how i feel tomorrow.

before i got sick, i had emailed a few quilting friends in my quilting guild to ask them if they wanted to do a holiday card swap at our holiday xmas party. we would exchange quilted postcards at the party. only four responded, but crazy me decided to make cards for everyone that i asked,. someone must have told another friend that was not on my list if they could join in, which is ok with me, that was friday. and today two more that were on my list ask if it was to late to join. which it is. i told them that i was making them one and that they could call the other people and ask them. i am not asking, i am still sick. this FLU must be making me think that i am superwoman and that i can make postcard for the entire guild. i have until december 20th to make as many cards as i can. i can only try.

here are a some pictures of some of the cards.

oh, i forgot one of my swap friend's wanted a obama card. so that is why their is a obama card. also, people are hearing about this swap and now someone wants me to put together a sway for black history. i will see how i feel after this swap and card making.

i am getting sleepy, feeling hot and my vision is not clear, so check me later.

yetunde

happy thanksgiving

hello, how are you. my husband's family have arrived early for thanksgiving. before they picked me up from work, my husband drove them around dc to see a few sites. the kids were screaming and hollering when he showed them the white house. tomorrow they are going sightseeing and planing to take pictures in front of the white house. me i am going to be running around getting a few things that was forgottten on our food list.

right now i am working on a obama quilt, that i am trying to complete. someone on the internet is trying to get some quilters to display obama quilts at the capital, so i am trying to complete mind as soom as possible. wish me luck. i know it's thanksgiving and i know you are asking when the heck is she going to have time to quilt. i don't know but i am going to try. so take a look at my piece and have a

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Stitches

yetunde

cleaning house

thanksgiving is next week and i have about 35 people coming for dinner, and i have to clean the house. about ten of my family member are actually staying with us for the whole week. so i have to clean up the house. my bedroom and sewing room are the main two rooms that need cleaning. for some odd reason i just can not seem to clean these two room, when i am cleaning other parts of the house, i will start, but never seem to finish in these two rooms. my bedroom is slowly turning into another sewing room. when i am doing my hand sewing i am always sitting on my bed sewing. i have been working on a couple of quilts that i am trying to finish before the end of the year. the more that i sew the more mess, i make in my bedroom and sewing room.

their is stuff piled up on my work table, books that need to be put back on the bookshelf, fabric to be put away. and i am not going to talk about what is in the corner or on the floor. i even have to put my favorite pincushion away. i have a cousin who keep telling me that she is going to walk away with my pincushion. all my sharp objects have to be put away up high so that the children can not reach it. the children like to go to my computer room to play on the computer, and to get to the computer room you have to walk through my sewing room. so that means that everything has to be safe in my sewing room. now as far as cleaning my bedroom, i will do my regular cleaning of my room, but i do have to put fabric and a sewing machine and put down my layout wall away. and then again i just might leave the sewing machine and layout wall alone. the layout wall helps me to think of ways to lay out my pieces for a quilt. i have a piece up now that is giving me problems as to how i want to lay out the pieces. who knows i might get a little sewing done while everyone is sleep. i am addicted to sewing so you know i can not going without sewing for a week. because if i don't sew there are going to be some people who are going to see how a crazy quilter act. and they will not like me very much. so let me get started on cleaning up and i hope that once i clean up i will know where the heck i put stuff.

wish me luck

stitches

Yetunde

UFO'S

Yes i am still doing UFO's. my UFO pile in the corner is getting smaller. i have done six so far. this one that i am showing is for my mother. i was thinking about keeping it for myself, but i better give it to my mother, since i told someone that it was for my mom. i hope she use this one. the first one that i made for her she kept on her sofa to show to her friends. so maybe she will use this one when she falls a sleep watching TV. i have been busy working on a couple of other quilts, that i can not show right now because i was ask not to show them until after may. i was ask to make a story quilt and it is killing me to make it the way that i want it to look. every two or three week i call the person who asked for this and i tell her that i hate her. doing this project is so hard for me. she keeps telling me that she know that i can do this and that she is going to love it. i am not the kind of person who you can say, i want you to make a quilt about this. i can not do it. i have to feel the creation that i working on. i have to see it in my mind. if i can't see it, i can't do. so for the project that i was asked to do, pieces have been thrown into my UFO corner. if i keep throwing pieces in the corner maybe i can grab a couple of them and come up with something before may 2009. i know that if i keep throwing pieces into that corner it's going to pile up again. i hope not.

this is the quilt that my mother show to her friends. the quilt was one of my first photo fabric quilts. it is a old quilt and she loves it. the two quilts that i showed in the last post, i did find the brown to match the quilt to finish my daughters quilt and i did find a nice piece of fabric for the backing for the other quilt. my daughter's quilt i am going to send out to have someone to quilt and the other one i will get to it in a couple of weeks because i am going to work on one for my aunt. like i said, my UFO's are going to be gifts that are being given out for the holiday. why buy gifts when i can try to finish as many quilts as i can. these are not my art quilts, so i don't mind giving these up. i take that back there are a few i would like to keep for myself.

stitches for now.

yetunde

how is everyone doing. both of my computers were having problems, due to getting a new cable system. hubby got all the sports channel and i got no internet. that was not going to fly with me. they told me that i had to reboot everything and everything would be lost on both computers. i was not having it. it wasn't broke before i had cable, so i very upset. so it was back and forth with who should fix my laptop and computer. in the end the cable company fixed everything. while i had no internet, i did complete a few UFO's. i completed three and i am also working on three more. this first one that i am showing is for my daughter and her husband. it should have been finished two years ago, but i didn't have enough brown fabric. the second picture is a quilt top that is finish, but i didn't have enough fabric for the backing, i was 3 inches short of fabric. tomorrow i am going to a quilt show, so i hope to get fabric to complete these two pieces. so wish me luck.

stitches

it could be Obama

what you think, is it him.

i don't think so. but i did try. i said, i was going to do a demonstration of how i made the piece of my grandson. this piece that you are looking at is done all by hand. the piece that i made of my grandson is machine stitch, using straight stitch and zigzag stitch for his hair. while i was trying to do Obama by machine, i was working on his eyes and i forget to lift up the needle to move to another section of his face and i rip the fabric. so you know that piece went into the UFO pile. i was mad as hell. so i guess i will tell you how to do machine piece, and the hand piece, what i did first was find a picture that i like, trace it onto paper or clear plastic. for this one i use clear plastic with a black marker. then from that picture you trace it onto fabric. a quicker way is to run a piece of fabric that is 8 " x 11" that is iron onto freezer paper, threw your printer and copy the picture that you traced. if you are going to machine stitch your piece, put your fabric in a hoop with stabilizer under it. all you have to do is, straight stitch on the lines that you traced, go very slow. other people use the free motion foot and also have the feed dogs down. i keep the feed dogs down, but i use a regular foot. i have better control. practice first and see what is comfortable with you. if you are going to fill in the hair, you can zigzag stitch or you can just keep straight stitching the hair until it is fill in. if you are going to do your picture by hand you can use the running stitch or the back stitch. they look almost the same. use two strands of embroidery floss and just stitch on the trace lines. if you make a mistake with the hand piece you can take it out and correct it, but with machine the mistake is their.
hand stitching on the line. the finish block.
the only thing i can say is that i tried.

stitches

yetunde

check it out

in the guild that i am in http://www.uhuruquiltersguild.org/ there are a lot of talented people in this group. there is sandy hassan, http://sondrahassan.com/ margreta silverstone,http://www.margreta.com/index.htm lawana holland-moore, jhttp://hahawater.blogspot.com/ jocelyn herbert, and winifred wallace, just to names a few. lawana, winifred and jocelyn are published in "textural rhythms: quilting the jazz traditon," quilt book by carolyn mazloomi. margreta and myself are in the "creative quilting the journal quilt project," book by karey bresenhan'. sandy and margreta are also in private shows, check it out. i just love the bright colors that sandy works with. margreta and winifred are more into fiber art, i love their work. jocelyn, what can i say about jocelyn, i just love her stuff. i guess i love her work because i feel that her work is similar to what i do. i truly feel her work, when i look at her work, i know what she is trying to say. now let me tell you about lawana, i have been following lawana's work from the time i met her at the guild. she is someone who is not afraid to try new things and that is what i like about her. her energy moves me. we also have carol williams who is a long arm quilter http://quiltsandsewon.net/index.html and our coordinator and founder of uhuru. without her there would be no uhuru guild. and their is also my friend nadine mills who owns a fabric shop. http://www.thefabricpeddler.com/ when you visit her shop their is so much love there. they make you feel as if they have known you for years and that is your first time there. so check it out. there are many talented quilters in this quild so if you are every in the maryland area check us out. Cedar Heights Community Ctr1200 Glen Willow Drive Capitol Heights, MD. we meet on the third saturday of each month.

stitches

yetunde

UFO'S

Well, since my soul will not let me be creative, right now, i have decided to try to complete some UFO's that i have laying around here. i know that i am not the only person who have some thrown somewhere in a corner. if i complete a few before the holiday they will be gifts for some lucky family member. i have pieces that have been waiting to be quilted for several years. nice pieces that once i complete the top, i am on to the next. then there are pieces that i look at and say, what the heck was on my mind to do that. i have a UFO that is still in a corner somewhere in my closet that is called, Too Ugly For You. i am still trying to decide what to do with it. there are flowers, african prints, african figures and some more stuff in it. it is just too busy and i don't know what to keep and what to add. i am going to throw that one back in the corner until my creative side tells me what to do. when i look at some of these pieces that i have done several years ago, i see how much i have grown. how i have improved in some things and how some thing's still stay as they are. there is a style that people know i made it. but sometime when i step out the box and do something else they are like, that is not you, but it looks good. here are some pictures of what i am working a UFO, that will be someones gift and a couple of threadplay pieces that i have completed using freezer paper with no hoop. not knowing that i was suppose to use a hoop. the threadplay was kind of fun this time doing it, so after i finish a couple more UFO's i am going to try doing some more threadplay. so check out the picutures, and i will see you later.

stitches,

yetunde

not my best

come on in. this was one of my UFO's that was thrown in a corner, so watch your step as you come in. there are many more thrown around here. this is not my best work, but work made with lots of love. if it is made by me, you better believe it's made with love. because i love what i do. the reason i know this is not my best is because i know that i can do better. i put this piece together in three weeks, for a coworker that is leaving the country this friday. she has been giving me african print fabric for years. so what i did was completed this piece by adding pictures of her family and coworkers to this piece. i also used fabric that she has been giving me. where i work at people travel oversea alot and some bring me fabric back. if i had more time i would of made something different for her, but was afraid it would not be completed. i have been given mud cloth and fabric that i don't even know what it is. i like to do my best and when i know it is not my best, others seem to still like it anyway. the quilt was given to my coworker at a dinner party yesterday and she loved it. when push for time, i don't do my best. i have a project that needs to be completed by april. i haven't even started on it yet. i just need to draw it and get started. if i keep putting this off, it will not be right. most of the time i am usually one of the first to finish something. i just don't know why i can not start this. i don't know what the problem is. i know what i want. i just need to get started. making my coworker's quilt gave me a reason not to start on this project. now that i don't have anthing to do, what is stoping me now.

let me sleep on it.

Yetunde

a few more

camera is still broke, so i will just show a few more of my old quilts. this first piece is raw edge applique'. i consider myself a hand quilter. this quilt was made by machine because at the time, i was having problems with my hands. this is call "healing hands #2". there is bead work on this piece which was done by hand and i suffer from it in the end. but when you love something so much, you deal with the pain. this is not a good picture of showing the bead work. there are beads on some of the hands, her neck, and breast. this next piece is my black history crazy quilt. done all by hand. it was fun not doing a piece that had to be square. the hand quilting stitching was fun to put on this piece. this third piece that i am showing is one piece that i know i will never let go. every time that i look at this piece, i remember when i started quilting, this piece it represent Juneteenth day. which is celebrated in June for the last slaves set free. one day i went to a juneteenth festival and there were some quilter there selling their quilts. they were also teaching people to make a nine patch block. i tried it and i was hooked. one of the lady's knew me and said, i know you can do this. i went home that night and made my first quilt. my first quilt was a mess, but i kept at it. this piece is a larger virgin of my june
journal piece that i made in 2006, without the quilt block in the left hand corner and a border added to this piece. i just love this piece. the middle piece is a whole cloth, that i drew a slave onto the fabric. machine stitched around the slave and then hand embroidery around the slave and the border piece. i also used colored prima pencils to color the slave. sometime i can draw pretty good and then there are days when i can't draw for nothing. their is a piece that i want to try to make now base on slavery or the election, but i can't seem to draw what i want. i am going to keep at it until i get it.
so stitches for now.

Yetunde

just a few

my camera is broke, so i am showing a few quilts that i have made in the pass. "i am not my hair," was a challenge quilt. it was two challenges that i made into one quilt. one was to use the blue fabric and the other challenge was to make a quilt base on the song call, "i am not my hair," by india aires. after this picture was taken india aires, signed the quilt for me at a concert. i love her music.

this quilt was made for my son. it is call "the shield." the shield of warmth, strength and love. i am also making a quilt for my daughter and her husband some what almost like this one, but a little different. once i get the camera fix i will take a picture.

this quilt didn't have a name for sometime. but last year (2007) one of my friends asked if she could lay this quilt on her son's casket. her son was kilt by violence. this quilt is now call the "homecoming."

today is my birthday. don't ask, i am not saying how old these old bones are.

stitches,

yetunde

complete

i finally finished this piece. it's OK for a baby quilt. the entire piece was done by hand. it has hand embroidery baby bottles, strollers, and pregnant woman on the quilt. i know it not a good picture. double click on the picture, sometimes the pictures will enlarge. i am glad i finally finish this. it's time to start something else. this quilt is not me. i don't like pink, or that baby blue that people love to put on babies. give me bright colors. yellows, green, orange and some red. you won't believe it but most of the time i am wear ing dark colors, but i love for my art work to have bright colors. now a couple of years ago i made my niece a baby quilt and it had these cute bright colorful cats on it and she loved it. now that she has seen this one, she loves this one because it is more girly. she has a little girl. i looked at her like she is crazy. i keep telling people i don't do baby quilts. this is the second and last one that anyone will get from me. i don't have time to stress myself out over this.
now let me show you a close up of the completed challenge quilt that was shown at the family day community festival a week before the quilt show. the object of this challenge was for all of us to use the same fabric print and to use all three item that were give to us in a grab bag. well i went completely crazy with mind. i added beads, shells, buttons, keys, batteries, screws and computer parts. i also made this piece reversible. so here is the front and back. hope you like it.

it was fun

almost forget to tell you. i tied in third place at the HANGING BY THE THREAD, III QUILT SHOW, in the art quilt category. peoples choice, for BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS. that is the piece that my friend asked me to add at the last minute. i only entered four and i wanted to enter more, but i got sick when i came back from my trip. i just grabbed anything just to have something in the show. i must say it worked out OK, because i tied in third place with someone else. that's a first for me, when i wasn't even trying. that's all for now.

stitches,

yetunde

pink is not my color

pink is not my color. here is a peek of what i am working on. pink is one color that i do not know how to match with other colors. i though white was a color that i don't like, but now i can add pink to that list. i have been busy working on this quilt for my cousin, who is having a baby girl. i had pink charm squares that were given to me years ago and just didn't know what colors to add to it. i love bold bright colors and pink is not on that list. my favorite color is black, i know that is not a bright color, but i love it. black is just about always somwhere in my work. i always have Michael Miller Jet Black in my house. now that i am thinking about it, it is time for me to make another order of this fabric. i have been working on this quilt for a week and i am almost finish. no black fabric added to this quilt, which was hard for me. when it is complete i will post a full view of the quilt.

and to those of you who know my cousin, please don't tell her this is for her. you all know i don't make baby quilts any more, specially with pink.

stitches.

challenge quilts

Saturday was fun at the community rec center. The quilts looked gorgeous hanging on the clothes lines. The quilts challenge went great. Gwen won the peoples choice for the challenge quilt. Among our quilt group, we all had to guess who made what quilt. Gwen’s quilt had thousands of bead work on her quilt. So we all new it was her quilt with the bead work, since she likes to do bead work. People seem to know,my work and Gwen’s work. We have a style that everyone knows.

I had a few people thinking that I made the quilt with the lady, because there were a lot of hand work done on this piece and they knew that most of the time I like to do hand work vs machine work. my quilt is the one in the middle. people also thought that the quilt on the other side might be mine also. but everyone did pick mine as being my quilt. we also did a block exchange and only three of us completed our block exchange quilt. we exchange dress blocks. with my quilt i added shoes to the quilt.

here we have gwen's, charlene and my quilt hanging so beautifully.

i love these dresses, i just wish everyone had finished their dresses. just the fact that i know they are all going to be different, i can't wait to see the rest of the dresses when they are finish. here are a few pictures of some of the challenge quilts.

here are some of 2006 and 2007 challenge quilts that we also showed this weekend.

it was a fun day.

enough is enough

i was reading another blog, and the quilter stated when is enough, enough. she stated that she had made a quilt a couple of years ago and it was missing something. and she kept playing with it for a couple of years. i like her final outcome. well i did the same thing and i still don't like it.
the back ground fabric was hand quilted with a sun and a hut. but it seem to me that was not enough. so i started coloring the hut and the sun. but no i has to go and add another hut and hundreds of beads to the sun and the huts. that still wasn't enough for me to stop and say enough is enough. i marked the ground area with color pencils to make it look like dirt and dry grass. it is a total mess. i totally hate it now. i am trying to think of somehow to fix this. the bead work is ok but i don't like the body of the huts. i should have applique the huts. someone asked to buy it and me like a dummy said i wasn't finish yet. it should have been enough and sold. i am trying to think of a way to put real dirt on this piece for the ground area and just leave the huts alone.

but for right now i am going to just leave this piece alone. i have told myself that i am going to finish everything that i start this years. this is what i am pushing myself to do this year.

i finished the piece with the girl in the orange dress. the family reunion is thrown to the side again. i am just not feeling that piece. my challenge piece is finish. i will post that hopefully friday or saturday. the space alien brothers piece is almost complete. the only problem is, i need is to get some heat in my sewing room. the air conditioner has that room freezing cold. my bones are killing me. the weather is hot as hell outside, but my husband is freezing me up in this house. i am sewing in the sun room, sewing by hand. just so that i can get some heat on this old body. i will try in a couple of days to go backing to my sewing room. so enough is enough.

journal quilts

someone ask to see the 2006 and 2007 Journal Quilts. these are quilt pieces that i entered into the Journal Quilt Project for the international quilt festival. the 2006 journal quilt project consist of doing a quilt piece once a month that is 8x11" for nine months and to keep a journal of your experience. at the end of the nine months, you decide what five pieces you are sending them. two of the 2006 pieces were chosen to be in a quilt book, "the Creative Quilting/The Journal Quilt Project," quilt book. the two pieces are on page 161, title: Hi, I am a …., and Healing Hand. they are the first two piece in the picture here.

i also entered a 2007 piece that is call "Brotherman." for the 2007 piece i only had to do one piece that was 17x22" and you had to use three ideas from the quilt journal project quilt book. the two pieces from the book and the 2007 piece are still on tour with the international quilt festival. i am trying to decide if i am going to do the 2008 journal quilt, that is due by the end of august. i know what i want, but just have not decided how to do it. it is a beautiful picture i took on a trip last year.

Busy Month

The month of june will be a busy month for me. there are three things going on near the end of the month of june, family reunion, family day at the rec, and our guild quilt show. for the family reunion, i am trying to make a quilt for the reunion. family day the quilting bee that i am in, will be exhibiting our quilts at family day and we have a challenge quilt going on also. i just finished my challenge quilt. sorry no pictures of this one until after june 21st. i also have two other quilts that i am making for family day. i hope that i can finish all of these before the 21st.

here is one of the quilts that i am working on. this quilt is hand applique'. the cap is fabric that i used to make the cap look 3D. i don't know if you can see that in this picture. the hair is REAL dreadlocks, that i attached under the cap. and to my friends and family, no i did not cut my locs. i am a hand quilter who sometimes try her hands at machine quilting and with this piece that was not working so i am going to do this entire piece by hand. i am still having some health problems, but i am not going to let this stop me from doing what i love to do.

this next piece is machine raw edge applique' that i am trying to decide how i want the border to look. i want it to be kind of different. i am trying to think of the border with a bright color or something. so right now i am letting my brain rest on it for a couple of days. this piece will be machine quilted with added embellishments.

the family reunion quilt is not coming out the way i want it to be. so that is not going to be worked on until i finish the first two pieces. if the family reunion quilt is not finish in time i can still have my family sign the quilt. the family quilt is a signature quilt that the family will be able to sign their name. i don't like to use white fabric, and i think that is why i don't like this quilt. some of the pieces are white and i am trying to like this quilt and finish it. some of my friends have seen it and like it. i am the one that don't like it. i have to like my work in order for me to finish it. i know what i want, but i just haven't done it.

wish me luck.