Celebrate! Vote! Share! The Black Women Stitch Sew Black at QuiltCon is a finalist for an Anthem Award in the category of Community Engagement in Education Arts and Culture. Please vote for us here and share widely! Voting ends 12/21 .

The Black Women Stitch 2024 Wall Calendar is available  NOW! Do not miss out on your chance to  and get your stitch together with a year of artistic inspiration!

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. From dance moms who are on the emergency stitch team (raise your hand if you've been there) to family sweaters, we have a great series of traditions this week.  A special thank you to Neci Harmon, Aaronica Cole, Kristin Taylor, Tanisha Robertson and Jaszmine Howard for sharing their stories this week!

=======

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

=======

Neci Harmon

Instagram: @whatsshecreating 

Shop: What's She Creating

TikTok: @whatsshecreating

Aaronica Cole

Instagram: Aaronica B. Cole

Youtube: Aaronica B. Cole

AudaSEWtea Podcast

Simplicity

Kristen Taylor

Instagram: @unsewcial

Website:www.unsewcial.com

Tanisha Robertson

Instagram:@yimicrafts

Website:yimicrafts.com

Jaszmine Howard

TikTok : @jaszminehoward

Instagram: @jaszminehoward

Sign up for the Black Women Stitch quarterly newsletter

Check out our merch here

Leave a BACKSTITCH message and tell us about your favorite episode.

Join the Black Women Stitch Patreon

Check out our Amazon Store

Stay Connected:

YouTube: Black Women Stitch

Instagram: Black Women Stitch

Facebook: Stitch Please Podcast

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 Stitch Please: Holiday Swatch. I am so excited to be here, and I am glad that you are here with us. The swatches are something that I really appreciate. As you know, if you want to get in on the swatch game, you should join the Black Women Stitch Patreon because there are downloadable swatch cards that come as a benefit for Patreon supporters. I like swatch cards because I'm a nerd. And I like keeping records of the fabrics that I buy and that I use. So when I look through my swatch card rings or my collection, not only can I tell exactly what I have and where it's located, I also get this wonderful like warm fuzzy memory of buying the fabric in the first place and all the plans that I had for it. And some of these plans have come into fruition, and some of the plans have turned into other directions. But either way, it's still really cool to kind of go back and say oh look, this is what I have. And that's because a swatch is a representative of a whole. It is a way that we can test out our fabrics, the way that we can determine what threads you'll want to use. It really does make sewing easier I believe. But for our purposes, the Stitch Please podcast holiday swatches are a way to hear from the beautiful community that comprises the Stitch Please podcast listenership. So without further ado, we are going to turn to those folks from our community who have generously agreed to share their stories with us, the stories of their rich holiday traditions.

Neci Love Harmon 3:08

Well, hello everyone. I'm Neci Love Harmon, and I'm a sewist. I love to do that. My social media handles are @whatssheceating. That's w-h-a-t-s-s-h-e creating. I'm on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and all, probably everything. Yes, YouTube especially, yes. So thank you all for inviting me to this show. I want to talk about crafting during the holidays. So one of my favorite things to do during the holidays is actually to make gift items for all the family members, or at least try to. In the past, I've created shirts, where my family name is Lovelace, and so I've made "Lovelace Clan" shirts with a little Virginia craft, little picture of the state, and I gave them to a lot of family members one year. I don't know if everyone wore them, though. But I know I wore mine, and my son wore his. And that's one of the examples of some of the gifting ideas. Now I've made bags for a lot of the ladies in my family. I've made other accessory items, like little change purses and things. My favorite thing to do, and the way that I give and the way that I guess love on people, is to give them things in which I've created. Now like I say, "I don't know if they really like it or if they wear it or--", but sometimes I will see them pull out a random bag that I made. I'm like, "Oh my gosh! That's my bag!", and then I take a picture. I'm like, "This for the socials!" So that is something that I think is amazing, just to be able to create something that you haven't seen in this earth before, and then you're able to give it to somebody. So if they like it, that's great. If they don't like it, you know, re-gift it or give it to somebody else. But don't tell me that you didn't like it. Some of the things I used to do as a child, my mother always bought me some type of craft kit when I was younger, so always there's some type of craft kits, and then she would always ensure that we created like gingerbread houses and different things. So we do that now with our children. All of us get together and we buy gingerbread houses and let the kids kind of craft and eat candy and things like that. And you know, there's something that's really amazing. Sometimes, when I get together with my family, we do other little art projects, also. And this doesn't have to necessarily be during the holidays. I'll get some pillows, and we'll paint pillows, and we did that in the summertime. And the people loved it! They were like, "Oh my gosh, when we gonna do this again.?" And I thought that that was a great way for us to stay together, be together, have fun, listen to some great music, and enjoy arts and crafts. So those are some of the things that I enjoy doing and some of the things that I do during the holidays that are amazing. Thank you so much for allowing me to come on and be a part of this podcast episode.

Veronica Cole 6:27

Hi, my name is Veronica Cole. And you can find me on these internet streets at theneedleandthebelle.com, @needleandthebelle on both TikTok, as well as Instagram. You can also find me at Aaronica B Cole & Co on YouTube, where you can catch me celebrating vlogmas right now. So as far as holiday sewings traditions go for me, I feel like this year, I'm actually creating a new tradition, which is doing costumes for the Nutcracker. I have dancing children, and one of the things, as a mom, that I love doing most is of course showing up for them in all ways that I possibly can. So that does include costumes this year. But our favorite thing to do is participate in the school's spirit weeks before the holiday season, which of course normally takes up wearing winter whites or doing ugly sweater contest and things like that, which means that mommy is in overdrive making all of the school spirit weeks happen. Because listen, when you have kids, we don't keep winter white on hand, so we do have to make those fresh from scratch. But outside of that, we do have a holiday party, which I love to create for. We invite all of our friends and family to come and join in with us. It's an "every holiday cliche" party where I of course will handcraft different gifts to give away to people, as well as cookies and things like that. For me, holiday season is all about making magic, whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, whatever it is, I just love to make magic with my hands, with my family, and with my loved ones. And I try to keep it as simple as possible, as opposed to getting overwhelmed. Then my second favorite thing to do the holiday season is making the teachers presents. I know that some people don't love handmade gifts, but I have to say I make some of the best gifts and most functional gifts. Last year teachers got all really useful bags, and this year I'm cooking up something special for them. So I hope they really enjoy it! But that's about it. Now we do do some holiday jammies, but I don't make all of those because there are five of us, and that's a lot of pajamas! So I like to upcycle previous years' pajamas and turn them into something new for us to bring in the holiday season with. And that is it for me! Keeping it simple this holiday season.

Kris 8:46

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 Jenelle Velasco, project manager Kristina Gifford, producers Krystal 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.

Hello, hello, hello! My name is Tanisha Robertson. I am the hands, face, and crafty inspirationalist behind Yes, I Made It, known as @yimicrafts in the social media street. You can find me on all of social media using that handle. A little story about my Christmas sewing tradition is actually that I don't sew at Christmas; I sew leading up to Christmas, but once Christmas hits, it's time for family...unless my niece absolutely wants to sew with me. And then I am whipping out everything. For any of my nieces and nephews, I will sew all day. But typically I sew from December 1st till about the 23rd of December. During that time, I make gifts. I make purses, bags, backpacks, wallets, Christmas stockings, scarves, table runners. That's pretty much my Christmas tradition up to Christmas. But the week of Christmas, it's all hands on deck with family. One of the things I started last year was 12 Days of Christmas. So beginning on December 13, I start telling you different gifts that either the sewist in your life would love or something that, as a sewist, you would want to purchase for yourself, because we're allowed to give ourselves gifts, in case you were not aware. Other than that, my Christmas tradition is I'm known as the Cookie Monster. I make cookie dough for my entire family, and I freeze it and then deliver it in containers to all of my family, who proceeds to go through it in two days and ask for more. So usually beginning at Thanksgiving, ending at New Year's, I am making cookie dough. But as for--to keep it sewing related, I stop December 23. But please follow me on social media for this year's 12 Days of Christmas!

Hello everyone, and happy holidays! My name is Jaszmine Howard. I'm coming to you from Maryland, in the USA. And you can find me on Instagram and TikTok at @jaszminehoward. My name is spelled a little different, a little uniquely. It's j-a-s-z-m-i-n-e-h-o-w-a-r-d, and that's on all platforms. But you will find me on Instagram mostly, seeing my make inspiration and things like that. My holiday traditions have changed a little bit over the past couple of years. But one thing that remains true throughout all of them is that there's a lot of planning in the traditions that I have. When I was thinking about what my holiday traditions are, things since from me growing up as a military brat, and so I didn't get to have one central location where I always was. I was constantly moving and so, because of that, a lot of things had to change constantly. And so my traditions are not necessarily traditional, I guess. You know, some people put the certain cookies on a certain plate. Sometimes you may not have had the plate because it got lost in a box or something somewhere. But one thing that I do that I find myself doing often and each year that I really love, and that I find to be--that feels like a tradition to me, is the wrapping of the gift. And so for me, I like to find the finest wrapping paper. And by the finest I mean it's TJ Maxx, but it's fine to me. It's the pretty one; it is the one that I want to wrap everyone's gifts with that year. You know, it has the funky textures on it, the ridges on it, on the paper, because I think that the most fun of the holidays is unwrapping the gifts, no matter what you celebrate. And so with that, for me, I'm starting a new tradition this year where, along with the paper gifts and the paper, like the wrapping paper and traditional paper, I do want to make some fabric-wrapped gifts. So you can make wrapping paper out of fabric essentially. And what I'd like to do is give that to the recipient, and then that recipient can either use it as a bag for themselves, they can get it to someone else if they want to, but I think it adds a nice personal touch to whatever gift I'm giving them. Because every year I said I'm gonna make 82 people a gift, and then I make eight people a gift. And sometimes it's two people a gift or none! And that's okay! One part that I find to be, you know, my little tradition. I take a lot of pride in having the cute little box corners, a little ribbon and things like that. But I think adding this extra fabric, you know, the fabric-style wrap would be fun. That way, you know, it's like it came from the person who makes things all the time. And so it's a handmade vibe that can be passed on forever, really, or until it disintegrates. Another holiday tradition that I take a lot of pride in is that I plan a ton. Thinking about I'm like, "Do I actually make anything?!" And I'm like, "I do make things!" But you know, some people might make their stocking each year, or they add something to a stocking, or they make a new stocking every year or they might make a new tree skirt for each new tree. And I was thinking, I was like, those would be really cool thing to do, but I just don't actually do them yet. And so when I had the opportunity to come on, I was like, "Do I have any traditions?" And then I was like, "Actually girl, you do, but it's just not normal." So with that my actual tradition is to plan, I will buy myself a planner for Christmas. Everybody likes to get their new year started right and everything like that. So for me, my planning is not just my personal planner, where I take my time and figure out the details, and sometimes it's very, you know, specific. This past year, I had one that was completely customized, and I love that, but one thing that I do like is I like to look around for sewing planners. I like to really think about what I've done over the past year in my sewing and think about the skills I want to build on. Basically, I have a form that I created, where I can like document a year's worth of, you know, sewing things I'd like to accomplish. And so it skills-based for me; I might want to improve on something or learn a new technique, and so I look at that sheet, I fill it out, and then I think about the project that I might want to do to, you know, utilize those skills. And one thing that I think is also extra special is after I get done planning, I typically will allow myself to make myself a kit. So I will pick a pattern that I like, you know, downloaded, make a booklet out of it. And then I'll also allow myself to buy the fabric by The Notion, and it can be as luxurious or as basic as I'd like it to be. And then what I do is once I get that fabric, I wrap it all up, I have a great time. And because I am who I am, I always forget what I had anyway. And so by the time Christmas rolls around, I'm able to open it up and I'm like, "Oh my gosh! A whole kit for you to make this thing that I planned on making a month ahead or a few weeks back. And so that's one thing that I would find to be my one thing that has remained a constant over the past, I would say about three or four years. And I think it always just helps me keep that extra spark of joy. It makes me feel really good going into the new year of sewing and things like that. And me, personally, I celebrate Christmas and recently have been celebrating Kwanzaa. And so, for Kwanzaa, one thing--a lot of these are Christmas traditions that also lean into Kwanzaa. Kwanzaa is where I'll typically find my little gadgets and things like that for myself. But one of my main focuses when I am celebrating Kwanzaa at this time, it's also you know, really supporting the Black businesses, finding, but it could be anything! It's really supporting Black people as a whole. So maybe it's a new blogger, maybe it's a new vlogger, maybe it's a YouTuber, maybe it's joining a Patreon. Maybe it's, you know, just finding people who do what I do, or not do what I do, that are, you know, that look like me, that have some similar experiences that I can support. So my first year of doing Kwanzaa was a year ago. And last year, I really was focused on finding Black owned businesses that cater to my basics. You know, a lot of us we love to support Black biz. Love it, all day, every day. But I'm like, is there a Black business owner that makes toothpaste? Is there a Black business that, you know, sells toilet tissue? That kind of thing. And so, this year, for Kwanzaa, my focus, at least in the sewing space is to find more fabric shops that are Black owned, that might match more my aesthetic, to find Black businesses and to support Black creatives in that way and to have that be my thing. So that is me and my holiday traditions. Thank you all for listening! Again. I'm Jaszmine Howard. I hope you have a happy happy holiday, a safe New Year and have a good day! Bye!

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's Stitch and use our hashtag #stitchpleaseholidayswatch 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 place 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.