Yo-Yo ~ A Bucket List Quilt

 Most of us have a bucket list of quilts we dream of making someday, but let’s be honest, my quilty brain is like a squirrel on caffeine. This year’s mission to tackle UFOs has been surprisingly successful with seven finished.  Starting another long-term project probably isn’t the smartest move. Then again, if I don’t start them now, they'll just be on the list forever...so here we go!

A Yo-Yo quilt has been a lifelong dream of mine. I remember seeing one in a magazine as a child and imagining how wonderful it would be to have one on my bed. After years of collecting enough scrap fabric for some truly amazing scrappy quilts, the time has finally come to start creating the quilts I've always wanted. On August 16th, I officially began my Yo-Yo quilt (coverlet) journey, starting with the color pink.

It was so exciting to be working on the bucket list quilt. Take a close look at the image below.  See the crinkled circle?  That's trouble.  Heavily started fabric does not like being gathered around the edges, so I had to remove the stitching...BOOHOO.

 

What was I thinking?  I should have known this.  It would have been easier to hand wash larger pieces of fabric. All I could do was hand wash the circles. 

I was certain soaking the circles in a tub of water would help loosen the starch.  After an hour of soaking in a tub of cool water I carefully squeezed one circle a few times to help the fabric release the starch.  Then pressed it between two washcloths to dry it well enough for pressing.  After pressing, it was still stiff with starch!  

Plan B...use hot water for soaking...again the fabric was still stiff.  

Plan C... warm water, detergent, soak for an hour and ever so gently agitate by hand.  SUCCESS!  Albeit with some fraying but I now have workable circles.

To cut the circles I'm using these nesting longarm quilting rulers and a rotary cutter.  Cutting a 5 inch circle of fabric will make a 2.5 inch Yo-Yo.  Kind of big for a finished Yo-Yo and they would be impressively cute if cut smaller but let's be real, smaller Yo-Yo's means more work!  I'll be doing good to get the larger ones made in a reasonable amount of time...HAHA!

Most tutorials for Yo-Yo's tell you to turn the edge of the fabric by hand as you make each stitch.  I'm pre-turning the edges using Kay Buckley's Perfect Circles. 

I definitely think it's faster, at least for me. I tried the old fashioned way once years ago, and let's just say it was a complete disaster!  

Cutting the circles produced some odd shape scraps. I decided to cut the irregular shapes into usable squares.  1 inch, 1.5 inches, 2 inches, 2.5 inches and 3.5 inches.

The 1.5 inches squares were added to my long term Four Patch quilt box.  Which reminds me I should work on this soon so it doesn't become a UFO.  Again, I laugh, like I need to start a new project with so many boxes of projects.  Better to laugh about my crazy than to cry.

The rest were stored in this Charm pack storage box made by Art Bin.

It's temporary storage until I start producing more scraps squares from cutting for this project.

To make the yo-yos, I was using Lori Holt binding needles and Coats and Clark All-Purpose thread. Everything was going smoothly until I tried to bury the thread in the fabric...snap! The thread broke. That’s when I realized why most tutorials suggest hiding the thread tail in the folds of the fabric. But come on, a thread tail stuffed into a wrinkle could wiggle its way back out, right? I prefer my tails knotted, secured, and hidden deep inside the yo-yo, sealed with that satisfying little pop as the knot disappears forever into the fabric.

With just a few clicks and a day of waiting, I’ve got stronger thread and some impulsively purchased Milliners needles. Honestly, I couldn’t resist, John James needles are like the superheroes of hand stitching, always reliable and never letting me down. 

It's not that Lori needles are bad, I'm just a bit of a needle snob, I guess.  Milliners, also called hay needles or straw needles, are ideal for this project. Their extra-long design makes it easy to take more stitches at once. Below is a screenshot from the John James website. You can find the Needle Guide PDF here.

Some people swear by the Dritz Yo-Yo maker, but not me. I had one ages ago and tossed it straight into the trash. It took longer to make a Yo-Yo.  I’m fine with my stitches being a bit uneven. In the end, they all come together beautifully imperfect, just like me.

To create a 90 x 90 coverlet, I need over 2300 Yo-Yo's. My master plan is to make at least 10 Yo-Yo's a day while watching TV. If I stick to this ambitious schedule, I could have them all done in 230 days and ready to sew, theoretically finishing by this time next year. HA! Knowing how chaotic life gets around here, I'm giving myself a two-year deadline. So far, so good.  I started cutting on the 16th, made my first Yo-Yo on the 18th, and as of last night, I’ve got 73 finished. Looks like I’ll be doing some catch-up sewing tonight!

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Baby It's Cold Outside!

 Yesterday's batting run into town was a real adventure.  It was so cold.  The weather app on my phone said it was 28 degrees.  But in a tiny little whisper font under 28 it said, feels like 16.  In my mind I thought it should read more like this. 

28

😲FEELS LIKE 16!!

The really fun part was trying to get to my car.  Getting in and out of the car was video worthy.  I'm pretty sure it would have went viral on YouTube.  The driveway is a solid sheet of ice and is slightly sloped into our property.  Just enough for gravity to take hold.  If I can get out of the driveway it's smooth sailing because the roads are clear. The arrow below is pointing to the road in front of the house.

 It was quite exhilarating and a great workout.  I'm pretty sure I worked every muscle in my body while trying to stay on my feet and off my keister.  All of this trouble for batting.  It would have been worth every bit of trouble had they had batting.  That's right, no batting.  They had batting at Walmart but it was small sizes.  Their website said it was in stock.  It's another 12 miles to Joann's but it was just too cold for this old gal.  So I made another stop for Mr. Podunk's Super Bowl foods then headed back to the house.  

Franken-batting is the new plan.  So I unroll the batting and see that it's a little wrinkled and could use an overnight relaxing time.  So I sprayed it down with with water and let it work its magic.  It should be fairly wrinkle free by morning.  Well it wasn't.  So today I'll toss it in the dryer for a few minutes with a wet wash cloth.

Since my plan for the day was shot I decided to do a little needed cleaning in the Studio.  I could sort through the scrap bins starting from the top bins and work my way down.  On top of the scrap bins is baskets, might as well start there.  The white baskets is my fabric pull for current quilts, no need to mess with these.  

The blue baskets are UFO's.  Let's start here.  I don't remember how far along I made it on each project, maybe there's a quick finish hiding in these.

Well would you look at this.  A UFO I was looking for about  month ago.  Miss Judy if you're reading this I found my dresden's for our bed runner project!  Did you find yours?

Judy is my neighbor, she is fairly new to quilting.  The dresden bed runner project was something quick and easy, and she could learn a few new quilty things along the way.(I made a tutorial for how to cut dresden blades from a charm pack, you can find it here) Sadly Judy's had a couple bad years on the farm.  When her home caught fire it put out the flames on our project.  Then she had health issue and more life, you know how it is, when it rains it pours.  Hopefully this spring the sun will be shining on Judy once again.  I can't wait to start playing with this Laura Ashley fabric.

Here's what I remember being in this basket.  Sugar and Spice. Quilt kits are not my thing.  I've purchased two in 30+ years.  This one was from our local quilt shop.  It had been in the shop for about 2 years.  They sold out of the kits once and made another batch of kits.  Every time I went in the shop I would look at the kit, then put it back.  When there was one kit left I grabbed it, walked around the store for a LONG time looking for something else to buy.  During this time I was also trying to convince myself I didn't need the kit.  It's just a dresden, I've made several dresden quilts, I can make this without a pattern, I have plenty of fabric in my stash.  As you can see none of these reason changed my mind.

Can you hear that?  Angels sing every time I see these sweet little dresden's with yo-yo's.  Too darn cute!  In one bag is 8 finished dresden's.  In bag 2 is 7 dresden's needing the yo-yo's to be sewn into place.

Each little yo-yo was made by hand.  No yo-maker.  Just me and my needle.  

Most of them were made while sitting in doctors offices and chemo units with my mom when she was battling cancer.  Some would think this would stir up bad feelings but it doesn't.  Helping dad and taking care of mom during the battle she lost will always be a good memory.  It was hard and not fun but it was the right thing to do.  We were truly blessed to have such a supportive extended family.  

Anyway back to the cutie.  The handmade yo-yo's were a time killer but when it came time to attach them to the dresden I was ready to speed up the process by using my machine.  I used a tiny machine blanket stitch and invisible Superior Mono-Poly thread to connect the yo-yo's and to stitch them down to the dresden.

The same stitch and thread was used to stitch down the dresden.  After it's washed the stitching and slight puckers usually disappear but not always.  I can live with that.

This is the fabrics for the alternating chain block, borders and binding.  Not the fabrics I would have chosen but the shop sample looked great in these same fabrics.  It could be that I just love RED...LOL!  I rarely make a quilt without RED.  More often than not RED is the main fabric in my quilts.  Yes, I think it's time to work on this again.  Time to get her done and on display.  

Just another day of MOO-ving things along, my word of the year.

    

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Making Progress Monday

At the top of the weekend To-Do List was press the Dresden blocks.  Laundry, dusting and cooking all fell somewhere way down the list, and the truth be told they were pushed even farther down when I made the decision to also finish making the yo-yo's for this quilt.

It feels good so good to be in the sewing room and making some noticeable progress.   The sun was shining most of the day.  Which made these bright and cheery fabrics even brighter and happier.  What a wonderful day!  

I couldn't help playing around a bit with all the pieces.  

So how big are those yo-yo's?  Not very big.  Just a little over an inch wide.  

The plastic template below shows the size of the fabric circles before they were yo-yo's.  As I sit here looking at the picture below it reminds me of the candy necklaces from my youth.  Do you gals remember those?  Remember how sticky your neck would be before you could eat all those candies?  Obviously a mom didn't come up with idea to make candy into a necklace.  

~ Lea Anne ~

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Sugar and Spice is Oh so Nice

 Whats not to love?  It has everything in a quilt that I love.  Pretty fabrics, flowers, applique and that level of cuteness that makes me smile everytime I look at the adorable blocks.  

You might remember in a earlier blog post my frustrations with this pattern/kit.  Well I found another issue.  It's not an error,  more of  a personal preference.  Let me explain.  In the block below you see the Dresden as it finishes before the yo-yo's are attached.  The pattern calls for a large circle to be placed over the hole.  The large circle is just big enough for the 16 yo-yo's to cover the edge.   After attaching the large center circle and yo-yo's I'm supposed to applique the Dresden to the background fabric that is the same print as the large center circle....what?  

So here was my pattern alteration(because I can never follow a pattern to a "T").  I sewed my yo-yo's together, then centered them on the Dresden and glue basted them in place.  Next was to do some seam ripping from the bottom of  the dresden wedge seam.  The extra fabric on the blades will be cut away before attaching the Dresden to the background fabric.  Wish I had made a test block before cutting and sewing all the Dresden wedges.  I learn something new with each quilt.  LESSON LEARNED: Always make a test block.  The little cut offs would have added up to some nice sized  scraps.

Here's another lesson learned quite by accident.  A few years ago started using Roxanne's glue-baste.(on the right) to hold applique in place instead of pins.    Well I read somewhere on the vast internet...."Roxanne's glue baste is nothing more than washable school glue."   So when my large bottle (on the left with the big brown glob) was empty I refilled with the school glue you see laying to the side.   The big brown glob is school glue.  Why is it brown?  I've no clue why it turned brown, but if it'll turn brown on the bottle when it sets for awhile, what's it going to do in my quilts!?   Now I know what your thinking....It's washable school glue, just wash it when you finish the quilt.  True..but what if the one quilt I use it in becomes a UFO, lays around for weeks,months or years?  LESSON LEARNED: Some internet quilt tips are actually bad advice, do your research.

 So back to those cute yo-yo's.  Remember I told you I stitched them together before attaching them with glue baste.  Well hold on to your hats....it's machine stitching holding those yo-yo's together.   A tiny little zigzag.  Can you see it?

Here lets zoom in and take a closer look, can you see the stitches?

Invisible!  This was so much quicker than  handwork.  Making the yo-yo's by hand has been a real chore(bore).  So anything to speed up this quilt is worth a try.

I know my loyal followers are tired of hearing about Superior Threads MonoPoly  thread but it really can't be beat when it comes to invisible thread.  It doesn't show on a quilt, it doesn't melt under a medium heat iron, and it won't melt in the dryer.  I've put this thread through several test and it holds up very well.  It can take more heat than suggested by the manufacturer.  It can also be used for the actual quilting.  If your making a quilt with darker fabrics it also comes in a Smoke color.    At about $10 a spool it won't cut into the quilt budget to bad.   I've made several quilts with this one spool and will probably be able to make one or two quilts with the same spool.   Let me also say my blog doesn't make money for suggesting a product.  My blog makes no money ever.  It's just me doing what I do...quilting.  

~ Lea Anne ~

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