Mini Yoyos

I like making fabric yoyos, little round pieces of fabric gathered together at the edges to make a little textured piece of fabric.  You can use it for all kings of things.  At one time women would sew the completed yoyos together to make comforters for a bed – often used in the summer.  I have made Christmas ornaments, pins, table mats and wall hangings.

Usually a finished yoyo is anywhere from 1½ inch to 3 inches in diameter.  But a few years ago someone challenged me to see how small I could make a yoyo and that began it all.  My yoyos were as small as ½ and ¾ inches in diameter.  Yes that is small.  So what do I do with tiny little yoyos?  I make things. 

Most of what I make are table mats or doilies as I often call them.   It started with a miniature challenge.  I made a wall hanging that was about 14 inches wide and long.  It had about 225 yoyos in it.  Sounds crazy, huh?  Yes well, I won a blue ribbon in a miniature category in a quilt show for it.   I don’t mind crazy for a blue ribbon.

But what I like about the mini yoyos is that you can do so much with them.  I often use them in quilts and other needle work where a button is required as an embellishment. But I can also take small cross stitch or bead designs and use those designs as a guide for my yoyos.  Where you would put a cross stitch or a bead just sew a yoyo.  So for example if you are making a design with 3 beads in a row, take that design and sew 3 yoyos together.

With that I have made all kinds of table mats or wall hangings.  I have a small 2 inch heart cross stitch design, which I have made into mats with my yoyos.

I used a bead design of an awareness ribbon, to create a pink ribbon out of yoyos. 

               

             

My favorites are some bead designs for a pumpkin and jack o’lantern.

Now these designs could work with bigger yoyos but understand that it would make the entire piece huge.  Let’s take my little heart. It needs 9 yoyos across and 9 down.   With ¾” yoyos, it’s about 7 inches square.  A nice size for a table mat.  But if we use let’s say   2 inch yoyos, that would make it finish at about 18 inch.  Now we are talking about more of a table cloth.  (My Blue ribbon yoyo piece I mentioned above used 15 yoyos across the top and 15 down.  With 2 inch yoyos that would make it 30” wide and 30” long.  This could be more like a baby quilt or coverlet.)

To make the small yoyos you need a piece of fabric that is twice the size as the finished yoyo with about ¼ inch for a seam allowance.  So for my 3/4 inch yoyo, I start with a circle about 1 3/4 inches in diameter. What I really like is it uses all kinds of small pieces of fabric (I was taught by my Grandmother to never waste fabric.).  If you are not sure how to make a yoyo of any size, here is my tutorial on making yoyos.

Now yoyos are one of those things that you either enjoy making them or you don’t.  I enjoy them.  It is not something I have to concentrate on.  It is very repetitious so it tends to be relaxing.  I often do bunches at a time when I am really busy and just need a little relaxation or am mentally exhausted and need to keep my hands busy like when I am grading term papers.   I often have a supply of hundreds of yoyos and then it is just fun to see what I can do with them.

So if you are one who likes yoyos and likes the challenge of making tiny things and don’t like to waste even a little bit of fabric, try making some mini yoyos. They are fun to make but I warn you they are addicting.  You can’t make just one.

©2019- Cheryl E. Fillion

Quilt Show Thoughts

As I am writing this, I have just finished my pre-Quilt Show duties and am waiting for the Preview party.  The Quilt show is on Friday and Saturday but the Thursday night before, the Quilt Guild members get together to enjoy the show before they are busy taking care of our guests during the actual show.

We hear who won ribbons and get to see the bed turning.  A bed turning is an old tradition in Amish Country.  For those women who sell quilts, they would pile the quilts flat on a bed one on top of another.  When some one wants to see the quilts for a possible purchase, the quilter just pulls back the quilts one at a time.  Laying them flat helps keep out creases and allows the potential customer to see how a quilt would look on a bed.

For our bed turning we actually use big 8 foot tables to lay out the quilts and certain (usually tall) members will hold up the quilt for the audience to see (It is actually on a stage so everyone can see the quilts).  We often have quilts belonging to a member or quilts with a certain theme.  During the show we do a bed turning twice a day for our guests.

I like our Quilt show.  Not just because of the quilts and vendors and seeing my work on display but because of the people.  I often get to see people I don’t normally see who come to our quilt show.  Old neighbors, coworkers from the college where I teach who may have retired or work in another building I don’t get to visit often, former guild members are just some of the visitors.

But also I get to visit with current guild members.  Yes I see many of them every month at the meeting but it is hard to visit during the meeting when we have a speaker. But now we get to share.  We might talk about the quilts and which ones we like, which ones we may want to create or we talk about our families or other things we are doing.

I usually do demonstrations of quilting techniques; this year it is making yoyos.  And not only do I get to teach a show visitor something new, I get to hear their stories.  I usually hear about the quilts their mother or grandmother made.  Or the successes or challenges (I don’t want to use the word failures) they experienced.  It is a great sharing time. 

And that is really what the quilt show is about – sharing.  Our guild shares their time and energy to present a great beautiful show.  Our entrants share their creations by entering them in the show. The vendors share their products with us and our quilt show visitors (and we in turn share our money with them. haha). And everyone in one way or another shares their love of quilts, fabric, color and design.

It is a lot of work to put a quilt show together and I am usually exhausted (I joke that my feet usually hurt so much they threaten to divorce me). But I am always sad to see it end.    It feels like a mini vacation. It is so nice to spend time with such creativity and creative people.  I like our quilt show.

© 2019- Cheryl Fillion

Take In A Show

I am in the middle of getting ready for our annual Quilt Show, so I thought I would post this blog again.  This is just a gentle reminder that taking in a show is a great thing to do for you and your community.

As I am writing this, I am frantically finishing up my entries, getting the items ready for the hand work demonstration I have organized (to go on during the show) and trying to figure out what to make for the potluck our guild provides for our vendors and volunteers.  

I just posted on my Facebook page about the show, inviting all my local friends to attend.  Have any of you been to a quilt show?  It is a fun place to go if you like quilts or if you like color, patterns and texture.  But it is also a good place to go to increase your creativity.

In fact, attending any craft or art show is a good idea for the same reason.  You can see what is trending, as they say now, in patterns, designs or colors. You can get inspired by a different way to do a design.  One quilt show I went to many years ago, displayed a quilt with a skeleton of a dinosaur which had its head and tail extended off the main body of the quilt. I never thought of having part of the design expanded like that.  

Something you see at a quilt or art show might just click a memory of yours that you would like to capture in paint, or ink, or fabric.  It might give you an idea of something to make for a loved one. With quilts, it might show you just the arrangement of quilt blocks that you were looking for or just the pattern you wanted to make.

Even if you are not a quilter or a painter or photographer, going to an exhibit or show can still give you ideas.  The artist or the quilter’s perspective may show you a different way of looking at or thinking about a subject matter or just the world in general.  

When you go to a quilt or art show, you are supporting the arts in your community and that in itself is a good thing to do.  If you are reading this, you are probably interested in creativity in one form or another.  Think about how your life would be without what you create.  Don’t you want to make sure creativity in all its forms is available for everyone?

So do yourself and your community a favor: go to a show.

©2019 = Cheryl E. Fillion