Latifah Saafir

Latifah Saafir is a modern quilter known for her bold and innovative quilts. Her quilt patterns feature clean designs with a twist. She adds challenging techniques such as curves and half-rectangle-triangles to her quilt patterns which make them stand out. She also has designed notions to help quilters master these techniques. In this episode we talk about the templates she has already launched, as well as what she has coming up (spoiler alert)!

Those who have been in the modern quilting world a while may be familiar with Latifah’s name because she was a co-founder of both the Los Angeles Modern Quilt Guild and the worldwide Modern Quilt Guild, Latifah currently teaches workshops to guilds around the country.

Show Notes:

Find Latifah at Latifah Saafir Studios.com
Check out Latifah’s Facebook Page
Join Latifah’s Sewing with Latifah Facebook Group
Find Latifah on Instagram
Subscribe to the Latifah Saafir YouTube Channel

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Read the transcript of my interview with Latifah Saafir:

Carolina Moore:
I love notions and I’m guessing that you do, too. Hey there, friend. It’s Carolina Moore, your favorite sewing and quilting YouTuber, and now podcaster here with another episode.
So today’s guest is someone who needs absolutely no introduction, but I’m going to try anyway. She is the inventor of both The Clammy & The HuRTy, and I don’t even know if I’m pronouncing that right, but I’m sure you’ll let me know. Please welcome Latifah Saafir.

Latifah Saafir:
Hi. Thank you so much for having me on today.

Carolina Moore:
I’m so excited to talk to you about… You have just some really creative notions, but before we jump into that, let’s start with your quilty origin story. What got you into quilting?

Latifah Saafir:
Yeah, so I was one of those that had been sewing my whole life. My mom taught me how to sew when I was six or seven. I got really interested when I was probably about 11 or 12. I have an older sister who’s a year older than me. We kind of did everything together during those years and we wanted to sew clothes, garments. And so my mom, who sort of hated sewing but was smart enough to teach us the basics, gave us the machine and just let us have at it. So pretty much self-thought, and we wade it through everything from…
And back then, it was mainly the big four pattern company, so Simplicity, McCall’s, Vogue, and Butterick. And we waded through every single kind of pattern and learned how to mix and match and do all of that pre-internet days, of course. And so that’s how I learned how to sew. And I became competent enough where I could sew anything from… Or I did sew anything from my suit that I interviewed in when I graduated college, when I graduated engineering school, to making my mom’s renewal vows, wedding dress when they did their 30th renewal vows.

Carolina Moore:
That’s incredible.

Latifah Saafir:
So I did all that before I even quilted, but I left quilts ever since I was about 15. For some reason, even though I was pretty fearless in garment sewing, I was really hesitant in quilting and I didn’t start quilting until 2009. I had been kind of gotten away from crafting and creating and sewing. I sew a quilt at an event and I just realized I need to be doing this and I kind of dive in head first to things. So that year, I started and finished my first quilt. And actually, I had to finish my first two quilts and so that I would have something to show at the first Los Angeles Modern Quilt Guild meeting, which I also co-founded that year as well. And it’s been all quilting all the time ever since.

Carolina Moore:
Hold on. So your first quilt, you showed at the first LA Modern Quilt Guild meeting.

Latifah Saafir:
Yes. I mean, to be fair, I didn’t have to learn how to sew to quilt, so I just had to learn a few quilty like putting a binding on or I had the skills behind me, so I didn’t have to learn to sew to quilt.

Carolina Moore:
No, no.

Latifah Saafir:
That’s absolutely correct.

Carolina Moore:
So you knew that you love quilting so much that you helped found an organization before you made… You didn’t have this stack of quilts and then said, “Oh, I think there should be a modern quilt guild.” You said, “I think quilting is amazing. There should be a modern quilt guild,” and “Oh, I’m going to work on this quilt at the same time.” That’s incredible.

Latifah Saafir:
For better or worse, I do dive in head first, so it’s okay.

Carolina Moore:
Oh, I’m going to say very sarcastically. I know nothing about that.

Latifah Saafir:
You don’t. Yeah.

Carolina Moore:
That’s awesome.

Latifah Saafir:
Yeah, and it’s kind of been all quilting all the time ever since. So it’s been a really fun, amazing journey and I never would’ve imagined I would be where I am now from when I started.

Carolina Moore:
That’s incredible. So your first quilt pattern was that first quilt?

Latifah Saafir:
No, my very first quilt I made was off of a free pattern downloaded off of the Purl Soho site. And my second quilt pattern was I basically looked at one of the older Elizabeth Hartman patterns and made it kind of without referencing her pattern. And then after that, I pretty much have only sew my creations ever since. So probably starting with my third quilt pattern was the first one, I was like, “Okay, let me figure this out on my own and create my own design.”

Carolina Moore:
So you fell right into pattern design?

Latifah Saafir:
Back then, it wasn’t really pattern design. It was designing for myself. So it was just quilt design. I wasn’t really writing the pattern for it necessarily. My very first quilt pattern was Glam Clam, which we talked about the clammy a little bit, but Glam Clam was my first quilt pattern, and I did it because everyone was screaming and hollering that they wanted to make one, too. And that was probably… Let me see what year that was, because it was a free download on the original crafty back in the day. And I wanted to make a clamshell quilt for some reason.
I’ve always been attracted to curves and what people think of as more difficult quilting techniques. Clamshell are originally… Antique clamshell quilts, you’ll see they’re small. They’re two and three inches, four inches, not much bigger than that, but I don’t particularly love to hand sew or do anything in my hand for better or worse. And so I’m like, “Okay, I’m going to figure out how to do this by machines. I’m going to blow it up. And so I drafted these paper templates. They had tabs on it, which sort of hearkens back to my garment sewing days where you [inaudible] for alignment marks. And the pattern was ridiculously long. It was stupid long. And I started developing this technique for sewing the way that I sew curves now. And that’s kind of what started me on my whole journey. That was before I thought I would do this as a career. It was a free pattern download, but it started my whole journey and I have a whole product line based off of that very first quilt design right now.

Carolina Moore:
I don’t know if you know this, so kind of an aside, I was a judge at the San Diego County Fair this last year, this summer, and the best of show quilt was a Glam Clam.

Latifah Saafir:
I know, I saw that. It’s so fun because I mean, that’s amazing. And there’s been a lot of glam clams entered into a lot of shows and they’ve won a few ribbons but not missed a show. So that was exciting. But it’s really fun because it literally started off as a quilt I wanted to make for me, and I passionately dove into it to figure it out for myself. And now to see literally probably thousands of glam clams made to the point where glam clam is now synonymous with clamshell quilts for better or worse, because I didn’t really understand that I should trademark a name for a pattern at that time, but that’s a whole nother story. A lot of people use it as a substitution for the word clamshell quilts. They call them Glam Clam quilts down, and that’s beyond what my pattern is. So it’s kind of fun. It’s a lot of fun.

Carolina Moore:
So move over Kleenex tissues and Xerox copies. We have Glam Clam clamshell quilts.

Latifah Saafir:
We do. We do.

Carolina Moore:
So you wrote the pattern well before you had a template then?

Latifah Saafir:
I did because I literally wanted to just help people make the quilt that I was making and people loved making the pattern. Actually, that also started my career as a quilt teacher as well. And I taught it a ton of times to a lot of guilds. And my only complaint was we love the pattern. We love the quilt. We hate paper templates. Can we do an acrylic template? And just knowing the price of acrylic, I didn’t want to produce a single use template, so I didn’t want to produce one template would make one quilt, and that’s it.
A lot of people ask me about my process for designing my tools. I literally throw it in the back of my head and it bubbles up at some point. I have an engineering background. My mind thinks it’s a very problem solving oriented, and it sort of bubbles up on how it all works out. And I worked through the problem all in my head before it’s designed. So the clammy came out in my brain, but I was working, I didn’t really have money to produce it, and I launched a Kickstarter to launch the first series of clammy on my first few printed patterns. And so it’s been a really, really fun journey.

Carolina Moore:
That’s right. I remember the Kickstarter that you did to launch it.

Latifah Saafir:
It was so exciting. Yes.

Carolina Moore:
Was that nervous knowing, “Okay, I’m going to launch this thing and it may or may not be successful”?

Latifah Saafir:
It was so crazy, because in my brain, it’s one thing for people to say, “I love you.” And then there’s another thing for them to say, “I love you. Here’s money.”

Carolina Moore:
Yes, for sure.

Latifah Saafir:
And then I also was doing something I had never done before, so I did as much work as I could before I launched the Kickstarter and launched it. But that last 20% of the work was the hardest because they were things I had never done before. I’ve never produced templates. I’ve never actually had printed patterns up until that point. And so it was definitely a huge learning curve. I learned to underpromise and overperform. It’s a big lesson I learned out of that because for everyone’s Kickstarter, everything’s always late because you think, “Oh, I can get this done in this period of time. And then it’s harder and longer.” But I wanted to raise, I think, 10 or $12,000.” And I just about doubled that. And there were lots of tears involved then as well.

Carolina Moore:
I remember it was wildly successful. I remember watching that and going, “Wow, this is so incredible.” And the quilted community, they showed up not just by saying, “We love what you do, but we love what you do and we want to buy into what you do literally.”

Latifah Saafir:
Yeah, they showed up huge, huge, huge. That’s how I got started. That’s how my first, and they’ve evolved. The basis of the clammy has stayed the same, but I’ve learned a lot. And we’re now in version four maybe, but the very first earliest version still works. It’s just had little improvements and tweaks over time, and I learned a lot about developing tools and templates.

Carolina Moore:
And you also offer in different sizes now as well, right?

Latifah Saafir:
So when the Kickstarter launched, I think I was just trying to produce the 12 inch and the 8 inch. And then because it was so well funded, I added the six inch onto it then. And since then, I’ve added the 10 inch, and I also have been coming out really soon here I have the 10 square clammy, which is actually a 9 inch, but if it’s on the 10 squares or your layer cakes.

Carolina Moore:
The 10-inch pre-cuts? Perfect.

Latifah Saafir:
Yes.

Carolina Moore:
Oh, that’s so smart.

Latifah Saafir:
Yes, yes, yes. And then, recently, I did the crazy ridiculous 16 and 24 inch, the Giant Clammy’s.

Carolina Moore:
I sew those and I’m kicking myself for not getting one.

Latifah Saafir:
Oh my God. So it’s one of those things, especially as designers and you’re a designer, we think, “Oh my God, wouldn’t it be amazing if we had X, Y, and Z?” But then in a lot of ways it’s sort of impractical because the 24 inch clammy is ridiculous, but it’s also completely awesome, but it’s expensive to make. It’s expensive to purchase, but it makes the most amazing quilts. And so I knew it wasn’t a product I wanted to carry forever, so I decided to do it as a direct to consumer limited edition if you want to take advantage of it.
Now, I may not ever carry it because it’s ridiculous to ship all of the things, but it was so worth it. And I just did what we call the Giant Clammy experience, and we had a couple of hundred people join in and they got the 16 and 24 inch. And I did add-on cards to the existing clammy patterns, and there’s a few left on my website but not many. And I may restock them in the future, but it’s not going to be an ongoing product that I continue to provide, but they’re pretty awesome.

Carolina Moore:
I’d heard that they were sold out and I didn’t go and check myself, which lesson learned, I need to go check the rumors myself so I know what I’m doing right after we finish the podcast.

Latifah Saafir:
I did sell out of my original stock, but there was a lot of people who still wanted them. So I did a special extra order at the end when I did the fixed sale. And so I did add on a few. So the 16 inches, there’s just a handful left and there’s maybe, I don’t know, 25 or something of the 24 inches. There’s not many left at all. But anyway, they’re fun. They’re super, super fun. And the quilts that you get out of them, the most fun you could do is not just to cut the shape out, but to piece something else and then cut that piece. So I did a 24-inch log cabin and then cut this 24-inch circle out of it, then piece those together, and it’s the log cabin quilt, but just that little bit of extra makes it so amazing and so special.

Carolina Moore:
That’s so fun.

Latifah Saafir:
Yeah, I love it.

Carolina Moore:
Okay, so you had the clammy wildly successful. People love the patterns. This has launched your teaching career and you’re traveling around teaching people how to make clamshell quilts, glam clam quilts. And then it’s so funny, so I find a lot of notion designers, once they have one thing that they do, for example, you do curves really well with this clammy, they stay in that vein, but you did a hard left, which I love, and your next notion was actually a half rectangle triangle ruler.

Latifah Saafir:
Absolutely. So in some ways, it’s a heart left, and I think that’s because people associate you with one product line or one technique or whatever. But half rectangle triangles and I have a pretty long history. So early on in the Modern Quilt Guild years, we did a… Oh, I forget what it was called, but it was an event we did where we basically blogged about making different shapes. And I was really intrigued at this time, and this is, I don’t know, more than 10 years ago, but I was really intrigued, at that time, about half rectangle triangles.
And so one of the earliest tutorials for creating half rectangle triangles without a tool, I actually created and posted online. And I make a lot of assumptions because of how my brain works. And I didn’t include really specific directions for squaring it up. And people were really upset because they said it didn’t work. So I adjusted it and reposted it. And it’s hilarious because if you look at the tutorials online now, most of them are pretty much duplicates of my technique that I developed for creating them. So I have a longer history than I think people imagine with half rectangle triangles. But they’re making them without a tool is just really a pain. It’s not fun at all.

Carolina Moore:
Because that seam allowance with a half square triangle, your diagonal seam line matches right up with the diagonal on your square. But once you’re doing half rectangle triangle, that diagonal is at a different angle. So it doesn’t line up with those marks you’re used to.

Latifah Saafir:
Exactly. And your same doesn’t go through the corners and you have to cut sort of the left facing and right facing half rectangle triangles with the angles and opposite directions. You have to cut them differently in order to sew them and have them go on the right way. So it’s a strange shape to cut, but it’s a really, really fun shape to use as well. So once again, I also threw it in the back of my head and tried to figure out how can we create a tool that makes… We pre-cut the triangles and then it’s also a tool to square them up as well. And we came up with HuRTy.
I’m fine with stepping out of the box on how things are done. So it’s really a little bit awkward when you first start to use it because we use both sides of the ruler. We flip it top to bottom in order to use it, but it works really, really well. And the beauty of the HuRTy is that you don’t have to worry about precision until you’re squaring it up. So you don’t have to be precise with pre-cutting triangles. You don’t have to be precise even with your sewing, because I give you a whole quarter inch all the way around to square it up, and that’s where the precision comes in and it makes it so much easier so.

Carolina Moore:
You’re speaking my love language. My favorite seam allowance is the quarter inch-ish.

Latifah Saafir:
Yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah. As long as it’s going to stay together, you’re going to be fine. Exactly.

Carolina Moore:
I love that you do use both sides of the ruler, because the other solution would be to have a two template set. And then if you lose one, which all of us have very tidy sewing rooms and would never, ever lose anything in these sewing rooms at all, none of us own four of the same notion because we need it so often and we can’t find the other three. So putting all the parts on one ruler means that if I have it, I can do the whole thing.

Latifah Saafir:
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So it’s fun. It’s the HuRTy 1. It does the most popular ratio, which is one to two, which is mean that one side is twice as big as the other, and it cuts everything from a one to two inch, one by two inch, I mean, half rectangle triangle, which is really tiny and super cute all the way up to 6 by 12. And it also does a weird ratio of one to six, which has these really fun long and skinny half rectangle triangles as well. So coming soon, I’m submitting artwork to my two developers right now is the HuRTy 2 and HuRTy 3, which will cover lots of other ratios. So two to three, three to four. There’s four total other ratios that’ll be covered, which are really, it’s fun. Now, it gives us all different dimensions for our half rectangle triangles. And we have a lot of fun with writing patterns for that, or just playing with them and creating.

Carolina Moore:
That is so awesome. I’m so excited for that. Do you know about when those will launch? You have an idea?

Latifah Saafir:
I’m thinking there’ll be sometime in the fall. Sometime in the fall.

Carolina Moore:
Okay. So later this year we’ll get to see those. That’s exciting.

Latifah Saafir:
Yeah, I’m super excited about it. Yeah.

Carolina Moore:
Now you launched a bunch of patterns at the same time that you launched the HuRTy as well, right?

Latifah Saafir:
I did. So a lot of people who followed my story online, they’ve heard about my grandfather. He passed about a year ago, but I was able to help him to make it to 101, well, a day shy of 101, but he took up a lot of time and space over the past 10 years. And I’m forever grateful that I have owned my own business and can kind of work around his care and my schedule at home. But one of the things I realized just after he passed was that I’ve been like… My business was sort of in the background or second. It wasn’t first for sure. So when it came time to release the HuRTy, I’m like, “How can I do this where my customers are fully supported when the product goes out?”
So there’s a dedicated webpage for the HuRTy. It has full video support. There’s tons of videos. If you use your little brochure that comes in the package that has the basic instructions on it, you can download that there. There’s even a fun playlist. And so I released the HuRTy in three patterns at the time. And because I was doing all the things, I also had a guest pattern designer as well, Caroline Hatley, from Australia. So that was really fun to have as well. And for the first time I really had a product release that I felt was done, and it was very thorough. And at the end, I didn’t feel like, “Oh, I have to go back and do this video, or I have to go back.” So it’s all there. And it’s really nice because on the HuRTy and also on all of the patterns, there’s a QR code where you can just scan it and it goes straight to that page, and we’re all things HuRTy on the one page.
So it’s all there. It’s really easy. I want you to be able to pick up your tool, if you need help, video assistance or whatever, scan it, and then go straight directly to that page. So it’s all there. But there’s three patterns. The other side, Mood Forever and Paperdrop. And Paperdrop is the one at Caroline Design, which is really brilliant. And then the easiest is probably the other site because it’s 6 by 12 half rectangle triangles and it’s only one angle. So it’s kind of easy to learn just at one angle, one size. It’s really easy to square it up, but the other one’s equally as fun as well.

Carolina Moore:
Yeah, they’re great patterns. I saw this launch and I was like, “Oh, I mean, it was just so well done. And yes, everything was all right there.” And also, I did follow some of your Chronicles of Granddad over on Facebook and just the generational, I mean, joy of the difference between where he was at and where you were at.

Latifah Saafir:
Yeah, it was a lot. And I realized that even more after the fact, but I wouldn’t give it up for anything in the world. It was hard. But it’s one of those priceless gifts that we could pass on to our families that having this business actually allowed me to be able to do. So thank all of you for supporting me through all of that. But yeah, Chronicles of Granddad are a fun series of stories that I told, and a lot of times to capture the fun moments, but also the frustrating ones as well, but there’s lots of stories about granddad putting ketchup on everything and all kind of ridiculous things. Me being accused of stealing all his furniture in his bedroom and stuff like that, but it’s life and it’s fun.

Carolina Moore:
I’m assuming you didn’t actually steal the furniture in his bedroom?

Latifah Saafir:
I did not. Most hilarious thing is, to this day, I go to quilt shows and people will ask me about grandpa before they ask me about myself. I loved it. It was really sweet. I loved it.

Carolina Moore:
So you’ve got the HuRTy. How did you name it, by the way?

Latifah Saafir:
I always tell people I amuse myself with these things. So I wanted to do something with the HRT for half rectangle triangles. The funny thing is when you look up HRT online, the first thing that comes up is hormone replacement therapy and not half rectangle triangles. People call half rectangle triangles different things. So I tried to think of what words we could fill in with maybe vowels and consonants to make. So it was like heart, hurt. Half rectangle triangles are really a pain to make. And so it was like, “I like to do a play on words.” So it was the same naming convention as The Clammy. So the HuRTy with the Y at the end, and then it’s like no fuss, no pain, the HuRTy. It’s really silly. But my very next tool release that I’m working on developing right now, the name is even more hilarious. It’s called The Wedgie, so it’s more hilarious.

Carolina Moore:
That’s the front door. I love it.

Latifah Saafir:
[inaudible] in template. That’s kind of fun.

Carolina Moore:
All right, so I’ve never been so excited about a wedgie before, but when do we get to find out about the… When is The Wedgie?

Latifah Saafir:
I probably shouldn’t even talk about it this early because people are going to start asking me about it, but it’ll be early next year. It’ll be early next year.

Carolina Moore:
Okay.

Latifah Saafir:
[Inaudible].

Carolina Moore:
I’m so glad that you shared that. If you want, I can edit it out, but I really don’t want to.

Latifah Saafir:
No, it’s totally fine. It’s totally fine.

Carolina Moore:
That’s awesome. And now I’m like, “I wonder what else ends with why that you’re going to come out with. That’s going to be awesome.”

Latifah Saafir:
Oh no, I think Wedgie is going to be hard to beat though.

Carolina Moore:
Oh, I’m in tears. It’s so good.

Latifah Saafir:
Yeah, it’s fun. I mean, the reality is, as designers, 90% of our time is spent sitting in front of our computers working.

Carolina Moore:
By ourselves.

Latifah Saafir:
By ourselves. And so I have to amuse myself somehow. And pattern is one of the ways I do that.

Carolina Moore:
That’s so fun. Sorry, you’ve put… I’m at a total pause. I’m so thrilled. It’s hilarious.

Latifah Saafir:
It’s hilarious. It is.

Carolina Moore:
Okay, so you’re working on patterns then for The Wedgie?

Latifah Saafir:
I am. So the fun thing about all of the tools, so the clammy is designed, of course, not just to make a clamshell, but basically all curve shapes that are based on a circle. So circles, quarter circles, orange peels, et cetera, et cetera. So I literally could build a whole business off of one tool. So I am constantly trying to release patterns for all of the tools as I develop more tools as well. And so my next patterns are more clammy-based patterns, but then we’re working on, for the HuRTy 2 and 3 release. I’m working on releasing two or three patterns that go along with that release as well. And then, of course, when The Wedgie does come out early next year, then we’ll have wedgie patterns as well.

Carolina Moore:
Sorry, wedgie patterns. My brain is [inaudible]. I’m just going to giggle like a 12-year-old the whole time. This is going to be the best.

Latifah Saafir:
Oh my goodness. It’s hilarious. It’s funny because when you do things like that, then some people love it and some people don’t. So I’ve had actual quilt pattern names that I’ve made, I’ve gotten emails about, and people are like, “I just don’t like the name of this quilt.” It’s like, “I’m sorry. What can you do? I have to have fun somehow.”

Carolina Moore:
So one thing that I’ve learned along this process, and I don’t know if you’ve had a similar experience, but especially with YouTube commenters, YouTube commenters tend to be the most honest people out there in terms of just giving you their unvarnished opinion. This is as fact generally, it’s like, “This is my opinion as fact.” But they’re not always kind about… Generally, in the quilting community, 98% of quilters are the most kind, generous, loving people that you’ll meet. And then there’s a two percent that’ll just tell you exactly how it is. But I say that to say that the opposite of love isn’t hate and hate really isn’t the opposite of love. When someone’s coming at me with anger, they’re still coming at me with passion. Love is passion and hate is passion. So even when they’re coming at me with anger, that feels like hateful. It’s passionate. And so we have that common ground of we’re both passionate about this thing called quilting. And so we can come at this together side by side with common passion, just a different twist on our common passion.

Latifah Saafir:
The reality is we have to deal with this in the classroom and that type of thing as well, is that when people have that level of passion about something as sort of benign as a quilt name, then it’s usually something else going on in their lives or something anyway. So we all have to learn how to not take it personal. So it wasn’t, but I had a pattern called Pickled Beets, and I had someone actually take the time to write me an email about it, how they hated the name. And I always think about it, and I just laugh. I mean, I can’t get upset at that at all. It’s like, “Thanks for sharing.”

Carolina Moore:
I was mentally going through the names of your patterns and trying to think which one could have been offensive. Pickled beets were offensive?

Latifah Saafir:
I guess, pickled beets are, I don’t know, maybe they had a bad experience as a child eating pickled beets. I have no idea.

Carolina Moore:
I mean, to this day I’ll pick out the lima beans and things, but I wouldn’t be mad at a pattern called Lima Beans.

Latifah Saafir:
It’s hilarious. It’s fun. It’s all good. It’s all good.

Carolina Moore:
Okay, so we’ve got the HuRTy, because the HuRTy just came out, it feels like this year, but I think it was last year.

Latifah Saafir:
It was the end of last year. It was like October, November of last year. So it’s almost been out a year now.

Carolina Moore:
And then we have The Wedgie coming out next year with new patterns. I’m afraid to ask if there’s anything else. You can’t have anything else. That’s what you have going on because that’s a lot.

Latifah Saafir:
It’s a lot. Well, I always have other ideas. So I have one or two other tools that are in the background stewing and sort of working their way through the actual dynamics of the design itself. But yeah, I’m focusing on getting the HuRTy fully out, which means 2 and 3 after that, that’s that’ll be done and then The Wedgie, and I’m not sure if I’ll do a Wedgie 1 or just one wedgie or Wedgie 1 and 2. So just dealing with the different wedge angles. And it’s going to be a wedge template as well as a dressed in template. So I’m kind of excited about that as well. So it’s fun. It’s a lot of fun. It keeps me busy and my brain busy, and I have way too many ideas to actually put out in the world. So I have to be really specific about how I approach this.
And I don’t usually do single use templates. I usually try to design a tool that is multi-use, but I do have two smaller tools that are coming out, acrylic templates coming out later on this year that are very pattern specific. So my very first printed pattern was molehills and Jennifer Sampou with her recent SKY and Chalk & Charcoal release actually featured molehills on her cover. And this pattern was written in 2013, and it has paper templates. The shape is based on an oval. And I finally figured out how to do for the five different arcs that go inside of this molehill shape, I finally figured out how to do it in one template piece. I’m so excited.

Carolina Moore:
What?

Latifah Saafir:
Yeah. Which just really, I was so excited to be able to figure it out, because otherwise, it’s ridiculously expensive. So I figured that out. And it’s going to be a limited edition. So I’m releasing a molehill template that’s just for the molehills quilt, but it makes it so much easier to use. And then I have a quilt called Glare that’s coming out. It just makes it really easier to also have this one template that goes with the glare quilt as well. But I figured out how to make that template a multi-use template. So it’s not as versatile as like a clammy or HuRTy or something like that, but I have dozen quilts that we can use with the glare template as well. So I’m always coming up with something, but that’s what keeps my brain happy. That’s what I love about quilting is the design part and also the teaching part.
So to design not only a useful tool or technique, but to figure out how to put it in a way that’s actually really easy and useful to filters as well. So that’s my love. And I tell people, I’m like, “I don’t love sewing.” And a lot of people don’t understand that. For me, sewing is a means to an end, and I’m really jealous of people that enjoy the process of sitting at their sewing machine. But I love designing and I love figuring out the puzzle. And thankfully, a lot of people get to benefit from it from my products that I’ve developed, so it makes us all happy.

Carolina Moore:
Yes. A lot of us get to benefit from it. I think that’s the power of a good notion is that it takes a process that maybe we could do it before, but it makes it easier. It makes it more accessible and gives us a better chance of success at the end of the process.

Latifah Saafir:
Exactly.

Carolina Moore:
And I love notions that are designed by people who understand the quilting process, I mean, especially quilters. And even if you don’t love sewing, you definitely are a quilter. Right?

Latifah Saafir:
Yes, you’re right.

Carolina Moore:
So you understand the whole creation process and the pain points of quilting and how to attack those.

Latifah Saafir:
Oh, for sure. I mean, I’m definitely a quilter. I do a lot of my quilts from the beginning to the end. It’s only been the last few years that I’ve started sending up some of them out to long goers, so just because I have too much on my plate. If it’s a quilt that means something to me, I like to own the whole process of the quilt. And it’s not that when I’m in the middle of… I don’t enjoy the actual rote process of sewing, but I love to birth my quilt. So I like to take it from design all the way into sewing those last few stitches of putting the binding on.

Carolina Moore:
Sure.

Latifah Saafir:
And I am pretty competent at sewing, and I sew really fast, but with a fair bit of precision. But the biggest part is that I have to sew all of my quilts because I have to make all the mistakes that all of my customers are going to make so that I can help them navigate and so that I could teach better in the classroom. And I always tell them, “I made all the mistakes for you, so just listen to me. You’ve done it all.”

Carolina Moore:
The best teacher who has made all the mistakes said, “Oh, don’t cut these all ahead of time, because half of these triangles are left-leaning triangles and half of them are right-leaning triangles. And you can’t do that but you can with half rectangle triangles.”

Latifah Saafir:
Exactly, exactly. Yeah.

Carolina Moore:
That’s so smart.

Latifah Saafir:
Yeah, it’s fun.

Carolina Moore:
Well, this has been really fun to chat with you. Is there anything else that you want to share before we finish up?

Latifah Saafir:
No, not that I can think of. Not at all, but I do want to thank you for having me on. It’s been really fun.

Carolina Moore:
Absolutely. Okay, so where can people find you online to be able to connect with you?

Latifah Saafir:
So pretty much everywhere online. I am Latifah Saafir Studios, all one word, so that’s my website, latifahsaafirstudios.com, on Facebook, on Instagram as well. I do have a Facebook group that’s Sewing with Latifah. That’s it, everywhere online.

Carolina Moore:
Okay. I’ll make sure to link all those spots in the show notes as well as where people can find that Giant Clammy if there’s any left.

Latifah Saafir:
Oh, yes. And the other thing I would like to encourage people to do as well is in order for our industry to really… I don’t know about all of your listeners, but I’m a touch and feel person, so I still love to support my local quilt shop a lot. So if you do have favorite notions, whether they’re mine or someone else’s, you don’t see them in your LQS, your local quilt shops, then request them.

Carolina Moore:
Yes.

Latifah Saafir:
Then request them. And they may not necessarily bring them in, but at least if they keep hearing the names of these products that we love and support your local quilt shops as well. And so we can all keep quilting and having fun with this.

Carolina Moore:
And a lot of times, quilt shops can special order an item and they can order one or two of them. They don’t have to order 40 of an item in to bring it in.

Latifah Saafir:
If some designers, if they don’t order from the distributor, some designers do low order quantities as well. Absolutely.

Carolina Moore:
So asking your local quilt shop if you don’t see it on the shelf, if they’d be willing to order it. That way, you can support your local quilt shop as well as supporting the designer all at the same time. I agree. Local quilt shops are national treasure and we need to protect them.

Latifah Saafir:
Absolutely.

Carolina Moore:
Well, thanks so much for your time. Everything will be in the show notes for anyone who wants to go find any of those links and we’ll see you later.

Latifah Saafir:
All right. Thank you so much, Carolina.

Carolina Moore:
Friends, that’s our episode for today. I hope you loved it as much as I loved having this conversation. Remember that you can find all the details that we talked about in the show notes, and those are all at ilovenotions.com. And make sure to leave this podcast a review in your favorite podcasting app. Leaving it a review will help the podcast algorithm show this podcast to other people who love notions just as much as we do. Friends, that’s all I have for you today, but I will see you right here real soon. Bye for now.