Welcome back Stitchers! Today Lisa is chatting with Tiavalya Befecadu a quilter and photographer, as she shares her sewing journey and the inspiration behind her beautiful quilts. Tiavalya is a 3rd generation sewing enthusiast who found herself restarting the craft during the pandemic and using family fabrics to create sentimental quilts. She shares her experiences with local quilt shops and highlights the beautiful pieces she has made, including the 'Space is the Place' quilt and the 'Alabama Authors' quilt. Plus as a loyal listener of the pod, Tiavalya has the perfect advice to help us get our stitch together!

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!

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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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Tiavalya Befecadu

A third generation sewing enthusiast, and a proud member of the Professional Photographers of America, Rocket City Modern Quilt Guild and the Historic Huntsville Foundation Board of Directors.

@tiavalya on Instagram

Tiavalya's Facebook page

Tiavalya's Website

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Lisa Woolfork 0:10

Tiavalya 1:46

Thank you so much, Lisa! It's so great to be here! I'm so honored.

Lisa Woolfork 1:50

I am honored that you agreed. You can see Tiavalya's work on her website, you can find it on Instagram. She is very generous, even with some of the behind the scenes things, about like how she puts things together, how she goes from photograph, to sketch, to quilts, to ideation, to execution. It's just so wonderful! Tiavalya, can you tell us a bit about your sewing story? How did you get started with stitching?

Tiavalya 2:16

Lisa Woolfork 2:19

She's like, "I have an idea of what you can do! I know what you can do, Sweet Valya. Let me help you, girl, let me help you. Why don't you go cut out these 90 yards of fabric real quick for me? Do that for Mama real quick, and I'll meet you back here!"

Tiavalya 3:54

Yes, like all of her triangles and squares. I did. And we used my grandmother's old Singer from the 70s. And so my mother made a king size quilt. It was a twin size quilting class. She's like, "Well, I'm gonna make a king because what am I gonna do with a twin size quilt?" I'm gonna make something for my bed. I didn't finish mine, right, and I put it away. And then the pandemic hit, and that's kind of where everything kind of, you know, restarted for me.

Lisa Woolfork 4:28

Tiavalya 4:56

Yes, it sat there for 10 years! It was not bound and––

Lisa Woolfork 5:02

Tiavalya 5:22

Right, so I have a photography business. And you know, I wasn't taking any photographs, right, and so I had to find something creative to do. You know, my kids were at home, were doing virtual school. You know, my husband was working from home. It's just too much. And so I had to figure out something. And so I really give God all the credit because He put the idea in my head. He said, "We're gonna find a way to take photographs and turn them into a quilt." Like, I honestly–– it just kind of came out of nowhere. That's why I have to credit God because I don't know, I just said, "You know, I have to find something do!" And everyone was doing something, I feel, crafty over the pandemic. You know, people bought sewing machines and knitting and crocheting. And we had to do something to break our mind away from like, you know, police violence on TV, and George Floyd, you know, being murdered; all these things, right? And so, I just said, "I've got to figure out a way to do this!" And that's kind of how it all sta––

Lisa Woolfork 6:20

Tiavalya 6:36

Lisa Woolfork 6:58

Yeah, yeah.

Tiavalya 7:00

So I said, "Okay, this is a sign, right? This is a sign that I have to do something." And so I decided to take that bag of clothes and old quilt tops, and I said, "I'm going to make the quilt out of this. And I'm going to take photographs of my mother, my daughter and I and dress us in the fabrics of my grandmother. And I'm going to connect the generations." And so I said, "I'm going to make it for my mother!" And that's how it started. And so, you know, I started off with one block of––my daughter, she's like, in her little ballerina outfit, her dance photo. And I took like an old dress of my grandmother's, I just took it apart. And I mean it's really kind of fantastic. But you know, I like bootlegged it real good! And I made a quilt block. And I posted it in a Facebook group and people said, "Okay, this is what you need to do. You know, you need to give yourself some more seam allowance at the top because the blocking was maybe about eight inches. And it was really tight all the way to the edges, right? And so I said, "Okay, I'm gonna redo it," and I did a zigzag stitch, and I used like white thread. And you know, like, I didn't try to match anything in skin tone or match to her clothes. And so I––that's where I started. I started, and I made something for my mother, and I just took all these pictures. And my grandmother just had, you know, this is like polyester, and, you know, all like, kind of like canvas kind of, you know, thick woven cotton material. And denim and all that kind of stuff, like my grandfather's coveralls, and corduroy, all these things. And so, each picture, I just dressed us in her clothes. And it was like stuff that my mom would remember because my mom would say, "Oh, I bought that for your grandmother when I got my first job! And it's like a bright orange polyester three-piece suit, right?

Lisa Woolfork 8:54

Oh my gosh!

Lisa Woolfork 8:54

So I put that together. And I took it, you know, to my mother, we were social distancing. And I took it to her porch, and she came out, and she said, "What is this?" She's like, "Do you think I'm about to die? Like, what is this super sentimental gift?" And so I just was like, "You know, I just really want to make this for you!" And, you know, I think with COVID, you know, we just were all so sensitive. We just didn't know, you know, who was coming and going. And so I made this for my mother. And that––I posted that picture of this quilt, you know, on Facebook. I'm like, "Look what I made, y'all! Like isn't this cute?!" And people said, "Oh, I want one! Oh, what's that? I want one!" And I said, "Well, I might be on to something!"

Lisa Woolfork 8:54

Listen! Listen, I love how you made your mother this amazing tribute, that you went through your actual family archives. And you found fabrics that came from garments that were worn by your grandmother, by your mother, and maybe even by yourself from like a long time ago. And you resurrected those fabrics, you took them out of the oblivion of a storage shed that was not climate controlled, where all of that stuff was exposed to all manner of elements, and only the polyester could survive that! I mean, considering how polyester survived, you know? Polyester is a durable material. And so you were able to actually pull all that together and reactivate powerful memories. And instead of your momma being like, "Oh my gosh, this is wonderful! I love it!" I'm sure she was feeling that too, but she was like, "Wait a minute, I ain't checkin' out yet! You don't gotta give me no final gift. I'm not ready for that!" But the fact that that is what it weighed to her, you know what I mean? That it is––it seemed like a huge culmination of love that you were presenting her with, and how she was very affected by that. And I think that's a wonderful story to kind of encourage your creativity overall. And so that this–– was this one of the first things when, you started to post–– you posted this image on Facebook, and folks started to ask you like, "Hey, I want one too!" Did you start taking commissions right away? Or did you continue to refine the technique? Or did you do both?

A bit of both. I felt pretty confident in my skills, you know, based on YouTube University. I used to check out a lot of books from my local library at that time, but I felt pretty good. You know, I practiced some, but that quilt, I think it had 12 images. So it took me a while to really, you know, get my technique together. But I felt pretty good about it. And I took a commission! Like a lady asked me to make two quilts for her, back to back, right away. And so I just said, "Okay!"

Now at that point, had you started working with a longarm? In terms of the quilting you were doing, did you all, did––what kinds of things were you doing to quilt your pieces? Were you still using single needle machine? How did you evolve into what you do right now, which is to put a quilt on a longarm sewing machine?

Right. I did start on my domestic machine, you know, shoving it through that throat space. And I think what happened was about by the end of the year, but––so this started, I started in the summer. And by the end of the year, I didn't like basting on the floor; I didn't like getting down the floor; I didn't like curve needles. I tried the spray base; it didn't work. And so my husband, who's awesome, he's one of those people that he encourages me, say if you can find something that makes you work faster, and it's more technologically advanced, go for it! So I bought a longarm, sight unseen. Really! Like I had only watched YouTube videos. I went to a quilt shop, and they were like, not really giving me the customer service, you know, that I really wanted. Because, you know, they're expensive! It's a really big purchase. So, you know–– and then they didn't give me a good price! So I went onli–– I went online, and I found someone in Florida who gave me a good price on longarm and then I just purchased it. I mean, I just bit the bullet. And it's been a saving grace for me because I do a lot of large, a large, you know, quilts. And also, it just is an easier process for me, and it's not backbreaking, to say the least. Yeah.

Exact–– no, I love that! And I appreciate you sharing that story about going to a local dealer, and not being treated with the courtesy and respect that somebody who was buying an expensive machine deserves. And I just want to break it down for y'all. Like even the domestic machines, when you buy them from a sewing machine dealer, they can be expensive. I'm gonna put some context on the word "expensive", because what I think is expensive might not be what somebody else thinks is expensive. But my Serger, that I bought at a most recent show, I got to discount, a show deal, and it was like more than $6,000. The domestic machine that I have here was retailing for closer to $8,000, that I might have gotten it for maybe 5500. So like we're not talking a $200 purchase. And when you get up into the longarms, I have not seen a longarm that's less than five figures. I think that the longarms, they are–– this is a $10,000 minimum investment. And so it's kind of, like, you know, the same retail experiences that Black people have everywhere. We have them in quilt shops; it's a whole huge knitting community, created by Black women, because of how poorly Black women are treated in knitting shops. So the same type of like racism or anti-Blackness, that we face everywhere, also crops up in the things that we love. And that can be so painful. And so I'm really glad that you were able to find an alternative, because I think there's nothing worse than having to convince some shops how to treat you well.

The other thing about the quilt that–– about the long arms is these quilt shops, they, you know, different dealers at different places, and they kind of, like, judge you, you know? When you come in, they say, "Well, is she gonna afford this?" You know, if you're going to buy any machine, I want a demonstration. I want you to show me, like, I want to practice. I want to–– You know, and then I might want to go home and think about it, too, right? And so if you're not going to give me hands-on experience, hands-on a demonstration, then why am I there, right? And the price was $800 more at my local shop than my–– the Florida shop where I purchase it from. So it's, like, what are you doing? Is that my price? You know?

Yeah. And I do think that dealers do have some wiggle room with what different incentives they can give, different like promos, they can give. And all of that, because it's so personal. That's one of the reasons why you can't check any of the prices with these machines online. It's very difficult to say, let me look up how much a Baby Lock blah, blah, blah, or a Bernina blah, blah, blah, or a Grace blah, blah, blah, would cost or a Handi Quilter this or that. All of those prices, you're not going to find those just out in the world. You know, each dealer gets to set their own, kind of, within some limits. And I just feel like longarming is such an expensive enterprise. It's not just expensive to buy the machine; it's also expensive to equip it. So getting the needles, the batting, the maintenance; it's a real commitment. That's why I think it's so useful and important to have a good relationship with a dealer. It's just–– it can be hard to come by. Because too many of these little businesses are, you know, just don't treat Black people well. And that's unfortunate for them because I will spend my money elsewhere. I'm so excited 'cause you got your longarm and you're finally, like, you're really approaching these quilts. I would love to talk through some of these gorgeous pieces that you have created. So let's begin with this gorgeous Makidada from The Color Purple. This is so beautiful! Can you walk us through what's happening here? What was the motivation for the use of color? What do you see this communicating, even for folks who aren't familiar with the book or the film? Talk us through this gorgeous quilt.

So this quilt, you–– I work a lot on commissions, but this is a quilt that I wanted to make, you know, for, not necessarily for me, but for my own creativity. You know, it wasn't someone else's idea to make this quilt, and The Color Purple is one of my favorite movies. And, you know, that handclap game is everything! You know, if a Black woman sees another Black woman, and we're playing–– Right, like, they know that reference! And so this quilt, you know, it started because I bought a book–– I borrowed a book from the library, about hexagons, and what you could do with hexagon shapes. And I have an AccuQuilt die, and I said, "Okay, this all aligns. Like, I'm gonna start–– I want to make, you know, flowers, and I thought about that image of the sisters in the field, right? And they had those purple flowers in the field. And so, I just, I saw–– I got the book. I was like, I want to make a Color Purple quilt, like I just have to! And I went to the local fabric store, and I saw a Jelly Roll of purple gradiation. I say, "Okay! Like this is aligning", right? A lot of my quilts, I always start from a photograph. And so that's how I make my pattern. I wanted to use bold fabrics. I love African fabrics, they're my favorite. And so this is when I decided to dress them in bright colors. But making those little hexagon flowers is really exciting. I learned how to make the stems and, like, use bu–– you know, like bias, like a bias stem. And so when I'm going, because I'm self taught, like I'm always, like, trying to learn a new skill. It's like, "Ooh, I learned how to make, like, these bias stems and I can make them have a little shape and wave, and I'm gonna put that in the quilt! And I found this book, and I have this die, and I'm gonna make these flowers." But the reason why I'm make it, at the end of the day, is to celebrate, you know, Black culture, right? I want to always see us in a good light. I always want to have a moment of our treasured memories, right? I always want to put us in a good light. I want to share with the world, you know, the things that we love, right? And so this is just like my tiny little part in the conversation. And I also love about this quilt is, like, I upcycle. Like those purple, kind of shiny fabric is like a shirt I had, a sequined shirt I had, you know. I bought it, I think, when I was pregnant, and it was like kind of a maternity shirt. I'm not gonna use it again. Let me use that because who wouldn't want these purple sequins on a purple quilt? Like––

Absolutely! It was like that shirt was waiting to become these purple flowers. Absolutely.

Yeah. And I love scraps. And so, you know, I love to use my scraps. I use the African fabric on the scraps. And so it just kind of, like, it's a quilt that gives me joy. I've sold it to a dear friend of mine, so I can visit with it again at another time.

Oh, good! Good, good. So it's in a place where it will be loved as much as you loved when you made it.

Yes.

So I love that. That's what the cycle–– the cycle of love is continuing. I wonder if I could get you to talk a little bit about the AccuQuilt, I have one as well! And I really like the way I can take all different types of fabrics and scraps and turn them into–– I've got dies for strips, and I have dies for half-square triangles. And I like the idea of having the ability to put together something in an unusual, like, an unusual fabric, but it can match, you know, other quilting cottons or whatever. Can you talk a bit about how you use AccuQuilt products and how they help you get your own quilting accomplished?

One thing I really like about AccuQuilt is I like the ease of instruction, right? There's so many videos. I'm a visual learner, and so I really love the videos that kind of demonstrate, like, these are all the possibilities that you can do with it. And because it's an investment piece, you want to know, like, I'm gonna get my money's worth. I'm not just gonna buy this to sit on the shelf. And so, like, as a newer quilter, you know, it's–– like, when you have to cut a lot of fabric, you have to cut a lot of half-square triangles, or, you know, you want to cut all these things, like, to have it be easy to cut. And then for the notches, like, you know, when I made like this quilt, and I have lots of half-square triangles, and the way that those notches are cut up, is just easy. It's just easy to line up. And I don't have to worry about if it's going to be on the bias. If I feed it in the machine correctly, right, it's gonna line up for me. And then, you know, all of my projects can, you know, look great! And I just–– I love the, like, the two and a half inch strip, right? And so that's perfect for binding. Like I just, you know, I just make it, and I just keep it nearby, right? And I love how I can–– it's just a great scrap buster! You know, I can make letters, you know. And I bought a Qube when I first bought it, and so I love that it comes with the Qube, and it comes with books and instructions. So it can kind of like let me know that I'm not just wasting my money on another product, right? I have so many things that I can do with it. But I just love their little videos to try to just–– that shows you how you can do it. Because when I bought mine, you know it was during the pandemic, and so I've been watching lots of videos all the time, all this consumption. I said, "This is gonna make me work faster!" Right? My quilting's going to be a little more accurate, if I do everything correctly. Yeah, but it's the accuracy; it's the education; it's the ease. It's the ease. Yeah.

Yes, I agree. I have an eight inch Qube as well. And I love how it's kind of like–– that Qube gives you, like, dozens upon dozens of projects that you can make, and there's instructions for them. So it's like, even if you don't know what to make, if you start cutting up your half square triangles or cutting out your, you know, your squares or whatever, they'll tell you what you can make. And I do like those little notches or the little flags they have at the bottom of their half square triangles. So that means that everything lines up and you don't get those little flags hanging off the end that you do when you cut them the other way.

Yes. Yeah. Those little dog ears! Yeah, it makes it so much easier!

Well, let's look at one of the pieces that you did that use that, and then we can talk about some of your other ones. I love this Space Is the Place! Like Sun Ra is such a important figure in Afrofuturism. Like I think that he and Octavia Butler, Samuel Delany, these artists really helped with the fundamental belief that there are Black people in the future. And that Black people ourselves are from the future. And so Space Is the Place. Can you talk about this piece, and what led to the creation of it, and where it is now?

So a good friend of mine, who's a local artist, he's a painter; he put together a Afrofuturism exhibit. And so he's been working on it for two years. He kept saying, I want to make something and I said, "Well, I'm not as educated about Afrofuturism." And so he's, you know, sent me some videos and some links to learn about Sun Ra, in particular, and the great thing about Sun Ra is that he was from Alabama. He went to school in my hometown, at Alabama A&M. And there's a story that he–– when he was here in Huntsville, he was transported to outer space. Right? He's transported into outer space, and so that happened here, right? And he came back and he said, "Space is safer for us than Earth!" And it was like, you know, he might be on to something!

I think he's got a point!

And so I wanted to make something for Afrofuturism. I did use my AccuQuilt to cut out the letters, which was a lot of fun. I used African fabrics for that one. I bought the background fabric on a trip. And you know, it was kind of, like, space, kind of cloud theme. And since I live in the Rocket City, I thought, "Okay, I'm going to use this for something eventually!" And the other crazy thing, which I love about this quilt, is that I was on YouTube and a lady was doing mosaic quilting, mosaic piecing. And so she, you know, she kind of demonstrated a technique where she's using, you know, like Steam-A-Seam and Fusible, and she's cutting them into these tiny little pieces. I said, "That's what I'm gonna do! I'm gonna cut these in tiny little pieces, and I'm gonna make this gradiation", because if you see the original picture, from Space Is the Place, it's a movie that Sun Ra made, he has this crazy cape and it's like this ombre, yellow and orange cape.

Wow!

So I was like, "That's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna use this mosaic technique to cut all these little pieces of paper." And when I tell you–– it was tedious, but it gave me so much joy! I was so excited to do it.

I'm so glad!

And you know, he has this kind of, like, Egyptian kind of headdress on. And you know, it's like, you know, when you dig in your stash and you say, "Oh, I have some gold fabric! Ooh, I have some shiny fabric––

Yeeeeees.

–– something like this. And so, you know, I did that for his headpiece. Someone gifted me some embroidery thread, and I used that to make shoe laces. You know, my daughter was helping me and she said, "He needs shoe laces on his shoes!" I said, "You know what? He does need shoe laces!" And so I you know, I sewed some little shoe laces on there. But this piece hung at the exhibit at University of Alabama, Huntsville. Right now I still have it–– it's for sale.

Oh, wow!

It's for sale, but it was just a joy to make. And, you know, I–– it helps me. I guess the other thing about the quilt, and some of my quilts, is that I'm learning something, right? I'm not just putting this man on a quilt. I'm learning something about his life! I'm learning about his contributions to Black America. Like I'm learning about his contributions to America. And so each piece, like, I'm learning a little bit of something each time, right?

Yes. And speaking of learning and of Alabama, your quilt that I've seen in quite a few places, the Alabama Writers Quilt! Like this, it says Alabama authors; it's this gorgeous bookshelf type quilt where you have the books arranged by the spines, and the different spines of the books are different fabrics. But you also did a wonderful job of turning some of the authors' images facing forward so that we can see who you also have included here as Alabama authors. Can you walk us through this process and let us know about where this quilt is?

So I was in an exhibit here in Huntsville. It was about women; women, as movers, shakers, change makers. And so I was told, "You can make a quilt. You can make as big as you want to, you know, you can do whatever you want to." And, you know, it's like, "Say less, okay!"

Exactly.

But I wanted to make a quilt that was Alabama-centered. I am a huge audio book fan, you know, I'm a podcast listener. I always have something in my ears while I'm sewing. And so I was listening to Yaa Gyasi's book Homegoing. She was raised, from the age of 10, in my hometown, and her father teaches here locally. And so I said, "Okay, I have to make a quilt with her in it!" And so I wanted to bring in all of these women who were born or raised in Alabama, who were authors. My mother was an English professor, and so I'm just a really big book fan. And this quilt, the reason why I made it, is because I want people to be inspired, you know, that you can do something great. These women were from Alabama, so even if they didn't stay here for long, you know, their seeds were planted here.

Yes.

And the other thing that's really exciting about this quilt is that it's more than a quilt; there's been, you know, programming attached to it. We've had professors come in and talk about the literary works of the authors. And we've talked about all kinds of–– like racism, intersectionality, and poetry, and, you know, all these themes that are in the book, we can sit there and talk about them, and then we can look at the beautiful quilt, too, right?

Yes

It went on a library tour through our local library system, it went to a local museum. It's going, you know, further south, hopefully to our state capitol. But the awesome thing about this quilt is it was purchased by the Historic Huntsville Foundation, they own the quilt. And so, you know, they have taken the quilt further than I could have imagined, right? And they've taken it, and we've made all these–– we've invited the public to come in and have conversations about these women. It's like, once again, we can continue to tell their stories, right, and the ones that have passed, we can continue to honor them.

Yes!

Like Harper Lee, for example, we had a book chat, and we talked about To Kill a Mockingbird and to really break it down. And some of those things that she talked about are still relevant now, right?

Indeed, indeed.

When I made it, you know, I really just kind of, like, watched a few YouTube videos and said, "How do I make a bookshelf quilt?"

That sounds like––

"This is how you make it", and this is the funny part. Someone told me there was a local quilt shop going out of business. I said, "I need some fabric for this quilt!" People were like, "Oh, let's get together and go!" I said, "Uh uh, I ain't going with y'all!" I got up early in the morning, and I drove like an hour away and bought up, like, I think I got 20 bolts of fabric for like $120!

Oh my gosh!

A lot of the fabric is from local quilt shops that I used.

That's so good.

I tried to–– each block has, like, a theme, like Margaret Walker at the top. She has, like, African fabric behind her. Sonia Sanchez, her hair are a pair of my grandfather's pants.

Oh, I love it!

Harper Lee was–– I told that she loved to tint her flower boxes, and so she has on a floral top and a very, like, feminine theme. Yaa Gyasi is, like, on a bright colored background; it's some outdoor fabric that I found at Joanne, and it just felt, like, useful for her. Zora Neale Hurston, if you see that iconic photo of her, where she has that hat on and then that chevron background behind it. And I found some chevron fabric in my stash. I said, "Ooh, like, okay, I'm gonna use this for her!" Fannie Flagg, at the bottom, she wrote the book Fried Green Tomatoes. Her background are little, like, green and brown circles, so they kind of look like––

Like a fried tomato!

Like a fried tomato! And then the other thing is for, again for my AccuQuilt, I used the two-inch square. Well, I used the large two-inch die, and then you can, you know, put the fabric on and subcut it to make the letters. So all those letters at the top and the bottom are just like two-inch, those little two-inch square pieces.

Oh my gosh! It's really very beautiful! And especially when you talk about the Hurston image. That's one of the iconic images of Hurston from the Harlem Renaissance. And so, once again, your photography and quilting kind of come together, because you're able to look at that image and say I want to reproduce it in the quilt. And so it's just really cool to see how you were able to kind of–– to do that and to bring that together. I wanted to talk about this one as well. You've got this gorgeous Jesse Owens quilt. And I love the way that it has such powerful movement, that we get to see Owens, you know, moving through space in this piece, through the Olympic rings. Can you talk a bit about what you–– how your quilting, in this context, in addition to the applique, helped to fuel this momentum that we see in this piece?

Well, first, Jesse Owens is from Florence County, Alabama, which is about 30 minutes from where I'm from. So I said, "Okay, he's homeboy, right? I have to honor this Black man who's from, you know, not far from where I'm from." And I always wanted to be, like, a sense of inspiration. If he can do this, then, you know, we can do this! We can do excellent things! This quilt was really hard to make. I think a bit off more than I could chew when I started it. It's about 65 inches wide.

Whoa!

And it's only because I had a big piece of fabric that I don't know where–– I was like, "Ooh, this seems like a good background! Let's start off with this big white piece of fabric." But I use a lot of different fabrics, like the black circle for the Olympic rings was from some upholstery fabric that I had. I upholstered, like, a bench in my bedroom, and I had–– and I took, you know, took that leather off, and I said, "Well, what am I gonna do with that? I can't throw it away! I'm gonna have to repurpose it," and so I used that. And the applique technique was difficult because he is in motion and he was kind of, like, you know, like he was–– I couldn't get it quite stiff enough, he's kind of floppy. So it just took a lot of Steam-A-Seam and, you know, fusing to go on to get it to lie just correctly. The circles were really hard–– because when I make my patterns, I start from the photograph, and so I'm winging it all the time. So it's like when I print it out, and I cut out that circle, you know, it's not perfect, right? And then when I go from paper to fabric, I have to find a way to give it strength, to stiffen it, to have so it's not so loosey-goosey. And then when I made the binding, I love scraps. So I said, "Well, I'm just gonna make a scrappy binding," and I started with my AccuQuilt, with my die, my two-inch die. And I just took all of my scraps and I said, "I'm gonna, you know, mimic the colors in the quilt."

Yes!

The quilting–– and I'm thankful for my longarm for the quilting portion because, you know, it's just basically a bunch of, like, cursive L's, right, going across. And then I flipped them to go the other way around, and then you know, go across again and flip them to go underneath, and so it's a lot of dense quilting. I tried to do that to kind of help him pop up a little bit off the quilt, to give it a little more dimension. It was a joy to make; it was really hard to make. I'm so proud of it! I had it in a local little quilt exhibit at my–– at a local library near me, and it won third place, so I am very proud!

Listen, I don't know who won second and first, because this is really very stunning. And the way that it just feels like there's a lot of life in this quilt.

He's, like, in motion, like, he is heading towards something, right? He's heading toward that finish line, and, you know, I'm heading towards something. I don't know, you know, what's that gospel song, "what the end will be", right?

That's right.

But, you know, we're heading towards something; we're starting off level. We're, you know, we're lifting ourselves, and we're going forward. So that's what I hope the quilt kind of, you know, emulates.

It really does! And I just am so grateful for your time today and for walking us through these amazing pieces. And I'm going to now ask you the question that we ask everybody on the Stitch Please podcast. Right? You ready? The slogan of the Stitch Please podcast is that "We will help you get your stitch together." Tiavalya Befecadu-- photographer, quiltmaker, artist. What advice do you have for our listeners, to help us get our stitch together?

You know, Lisa, I've thought about this a lot because I'm a fan of the podcast! And I would always say to listen to your own voice, to be confident in your decision when it comes to your artwork, when it comes to your quilting, and to just, you know, follow your own desires. You know, don't worry about the opinions of others because when you make something and you're pleased with it, that's enough. I can make a million quilts that never sold, but if I like them, then I have done myself justice. So I would just say listen to your own voice and be guided by, you know, what's in your heart.

Wow. And on that note, I thank you so much for being with us today on the Stitch Please podcast. Let us know how we can find you on the socials because people are gonna be looking for you. How can we find you on the socials?

On Instagram, it's @tiavalya. It's t-i-a-v-a-l-y-a, and I'm on Facebook. It's Tiavalya Photography and Textile Art.

Thank you so much for being with us today! This was fantastic!

Thank you, Lisa, I appreciate it!

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!