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