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Welcome back stitchers! We are sew excited to bring you a new tradition to the Stitch Please Podcast: Holiday Swatches. A fabric swatch is a small sample of fabric that allows you to visualize a project before cutting into yardage. Swatches are useful for sewing because they help us match fabrics, guide fabric prep, and prevent waste. Most importantly, if cultivated, swatches can become an archive of your creativity. This swatch series is here to celebrate the stitch please community by hearing from you all. For the month of December we will be sharing Holiday Sewing Traditions. In the final edition of 2023 we hear all about New Years Eve dresses, some adorable ideas for advent calendars (it's never to early to start!), the importance of a thoughtful gift and Eid! A special thank you to Ashley Chapman, Kya Lee, Ellie L, Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich and Zahiyya Abdul-Karim for sharing their stories this week!

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Lisa Woolfork

Lisa Woolfork is an associate professor of English specializing in African American literature and culture. Her teaching and research explore Black women writers, Black identity, trauma theory, and American slavery. She is the founder of Black Women Stitch, the sewing group where Black lives matter. She is also the host/producer of Stitch Please, a weekly audio podcast that centers on Black women, girls, and femmes in sewing. In the summer of 2017, she actively resisted the white supremacist marches in her community, Charlottesville, Virginia. The city became a symbol of lethal resurging white supremacist violence. She remains active in a variety of university and community initiatives, including the Community Engaged Scholars program. She believes in the power of creative liberation.

Instagram: Lisa Woolfork

Twitter: Lisa Woolfork

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Ashley Chapman

Instagram: @madebybertha

Kya Lee

Website: kyaarts.com

Ellie L

Instagram: @sallieandsamstyle

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich

Instagram:@olugbemisolarhudayperkovich

Website:https://www.olugbemisolabooks.com/

Zahiyya Abdul-Karim

Instagram : @covermechic

Youtube: @covermechic

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Lisa Woolfork 0:00

Lisa Woolfork 1:09

Hello Stitchers! Welcome to Stitch Please. The official podcast of Black Women Stitch, the sewing group where Black lives matter. I'm your host, Lisa Woolfork. I'm a fourth generation sewing enthusiast, with more than 20 years of sewing experience. I am looking forward to today's conversation. So sit back, relax and get ready to get your stitch together! Hey, friends, hey! Welcome back to another episode of the Stitch Please Podcast: Holiday Swatch. As you might know, a swatch is a piece of fabric that represents the whole. It lets us kind of reflect on the entire piece of the fabric, without having it with us at all times. It's a really wonderful reference point. But for the Stitch Please podcast, these Holiday Swatch episodes are also ways to hear from the beautiful fabric of our community, which is made up of so many different intricate threads of wonderful people. I am delighted and honored to have the voices from the Stitch Please community front and center in these episodes. And I'm grateful to you for being here as well! One holiday tradition I've started celebrating in recent years is making gifts, like fleece hats and fleece scarves. This is a really fun project! I really enjoy the fleece hats, especially. I think they're really extra warm. I've also learned to put in some stretch satin, or even some spandex, as a lining, so that your hair doesn't get too dried out because fleece can be very drying on your hair and skin. And having a scarf out of the same fabric is just a bonus, and it keeps you extra warm as well. This is a recent tradition because I didn't grow up in a cold weather place. But since I live in one now, it has been really enjoyable to make hats and scarves as gifts for folks. So that's one of my holiday traditions. And now we'll hear about more holiday traditions from the Stitch Please podcast community. Thanks again for being here, and thanks for listening!

Ashley Chapman 3:13

Hi, my name is Ashley Chapman! You can find me on Instagram at @madebybertha, which is my nickname. And my holiday tradition is pretty simple. Basically every year for my family, I try to at least make one handmade gift. I really like thoughtful gifts, so I try to do things that really speak to their personality or an interest that they may have. So I may make like an ornament or as far as like a textile thing, I do a lot of like dye sublimation, which is basically a process which involves a special ink, and you make a transfer, and you use a heat press, and you put it on like a shirt or a pillowcase or a blanket--like those picture blankets that you might find, that's usually done through dye sublimation. So I'll do a lot of things with that, especially around the holidays. And yeah, that's pretty much it!

Kaya Lee 4:15

Hi, I'm Kya Lee! My website is Kya Arts, and I'm on Instagram at @kyaarts_. And my sewing journey began about six years ago, but I still consider myself quite fairly a beginner because I haven't really committed as much as I'd like to, being an educator at the same time. But this year, I have picked it up quite a lot. I'm also training to be a costume designer and set designer, so sewing and crafting really goes in well with that. My holiday traditions, actually I started last year, and I started making crafts for the tree, mini stockings, and then I was pulling out my crafts this holiday, and I still had the pattern. So I've just been finishing up crafts from last year, this year, and just mini stockings and Christmas trees and things like that. In terms of sewing, I've been making a few skirts; I love pleats, so a few pleated skirts. And my next, more extravagant dress is for New Year's Eve, which has got a bow, which I love. I also use up my scraps around the holidays and try and find crafts that would utilize my scraps because I'm really into sustainable fashion and sustainability within crafts, because it just using it up is just much better for the environment and people. So most of my holiday sewing is using up my scraps and making them into something new, and making a few new dresses for parties that I hope to attend. I'm hoping to make a couple of dressing gowns. I don't know if you call them that in the States--"night wear". Because it's winter over here in London and I want to get cozy, watch a few films, some PJs, and most of my holiday sewing is just using up anything that I have!

Lisa Woolfork 6:15

Hey, friends, hey! I wanted to pause briefly and take a moment to thank those who make the Stitch Please podcast possible. To our Patreon subscribers and ActBlue donors, thank you. Your support keeps the lights on, and your faith keeps me going. To Chris Rivera and the team at Congregate Charlottesville, thank you for your fiscal sponsorship and the lessons in financial stewardship; you are very much appreciated. To the guests we've had this year, thank you! Shout out to Bisa Butler for celebrating our 200th episode with us, and special thanks to all the guests who have made every episode of the Stitch Please podcast a very special episode. And to the Stitch Please team, sincere gratitude. To content creator Janelle Velasco, project manager Christina Gifford, producers Crystal Hill and Mike Bryant, and live show producer Latrice Sampson Richards, I couldn't do it without you! And last, but not least, thank YOU. Yes, you! I am totally talking about you. Did you hear me say you? Uh huh. Thank YOU for listening. Thank you for telling your friends and family about the show. Thank you for following and reposting us on socials. Thank you for your warm direct messages and comments. Thank you for being the best group of Stitchers I could ever have hoped for! Thank you.

Ellie L 7:40

Hi, I'm Ellie L from Sallie and Sam Style, and I'm here to share my favorite holidays sewing traditions. So when I think of holiday sewing traditions, I have no choice but to think about the very first thing I made and that was a New Year's Eve dress that I made by hand. And when I say "by hand", I mean I sewed it with needle and thread, with no sewing machine in sight! And yes, I was ambitious. I was like 20, 19 at the time, and I had no cares about perfection. And when I think about that time, it was the best because I wasn't worried about how professional it looked or how the inside looked. I just wanted to make something! And did I wear it? Yes, with pride! I wore it out on New Year's Eve, had a great time, told everyone I made my dress, as we all do. And that sparked something within me to become a seasonal sewist, as I call myself. So I sew for the seasons, I sew for the holidays. And when I think about my traditions now, I love setting the mood for the holidays. I love decorating my sewing space. I love lighting that same holiday candle, even putting on the same holiday movie. And I'm a sucker for seasonal fabric, so if I don't use those seasonal fabrics within the month of December, guess what happens? They get pushed to the side, all for next December, to try again. So I love using all of these sewing traditions and my habit of sewing now. I love the fact that I can set the environment. And I love even more so that I'm a mom now, so it's not just about sewing for myself, but I sew for my son. I tend to make a lot of aprons. That has been my thing lately for the holidays, to sew holiday aprons for everyone, including my mom, my mother-in-law, sister. And that's just like the perfect gift to sew for me around the holidays. I can get creative. I can use all of the seasonal fabrics that I tend to not use up by the end of December, and it's a good way to just give something that's special and creative and unique. Another sewing tradition I think of around the holidays that I have to put out is this year trying to sew a Christmas tree skirt, which is new for me. I tend not to do anything outside of clothing sewing, so I will definitely show that off and let you know how it goes. But besides that, I am happy to share all of my sewing holiday traditions, and I hope this inspired you to get to sewing!

Hi! I'm Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich. I'm an author of children's books and maker of many, many different types of things. During this season, I like to have times when I'm taking a step back from writing. And I usually do a lot of knitting, a lot of the knitting that I think I'm going to do throughout the rest of the year for gifts. So I make these plans to do all this gift knitting, and then this time of year comes, and I have not finished any of it. So I usually spend this time kind of catching up on those things that were going to be gifts. And sometimes, because I like to knit a lot of hats, sometimes I ended up keeping them. Sometimes I give them to someone other than the person I originally thought they might be for, especially if I'm really behind. Sometimes adult hats wind up being baby hats because they go a little faster 'cause they're smaller. I love doing toy knitting around this time. One tradition that I have that I kind of need to renew, I guess, is I used to make these little finger puppet Advent calendar thingamajigs; I don't even know what to call them. They had a wooden base, and then I sewed little outfits on them, and I had one for each day of Advent. And I would put a little message and verse and activity inside and my daughter and I would take a finger puppet, open it up every year. They've gotten a little raggedy now; it's been a few years. So I'm going to redo some of those. I'm going to keep up with the knitting. I have some knits projects that I want to try, intarsia projects that I'd like to try. And my new thing this year is I'm going to sew something for myself. I rarely sew garments for myself, but I've just gotten back into it, doing some caps and a couple of dresses. And I'm going to do the Zadie Jumpsuit for myself. I have some great fabric that I brought back from Nigeria a couple of months ago, and I'm looking forward to giving this a try. I love this time of making! I love making with my daughter, especially! I love cooking with her, I love knitting with her. Doing stuff together kind of takes me back to when I used to make with my mother and my grandmother, so it's a special time, and I love it!

Thank y'all so much for taking the time to be with us today! I cannot wait to see what you make this holiday season. Don't forget to tag us at Black Women Stitch and use our hashtag #sitchpleaseholidayswatch and #stitchpleaseswatch. You've been listening to Stitch Please, the official podcast of Black Women Stitch, the sewing group where Black lives matter. We appreciate you joining us this week, and every week, for stories that center Black women, girls, and femmes in sewing. We invite you to join the Black Women Stitch Patreon community, with giving levels beginning at $5 a month. Your contributions help us bring the Stitch Please podcast to you every week. Thank you for listening, thank you for your support, and come back next week and we'll help you get your stitch together!