If you decide to try this week’s project and your mother asks what you’re making, tell her, “It’s a yo-yo, Ma.”
OK, we apologize, but the chance to make a pun like that one doesn’t come along every day.
Several years ago, one of our readers suggested that we do a column on yo-yos, and although it’s taken us a very long time to get to it, here we go.
Yo-yos are those puffy little fabric rosettes that have been around forever, adorning everything from apparel to parlor pillows, and are a staple with modern-day quilters.
“Project Runway” fans, a group to which we confess we belong, may also remember that yo-yos were both the making and the undoing of Angela on Season 3. Her winning design featured subtle yo-yos applied to a stylish jacket, while the ensemble that earned her the boot included two floral rosette clusters on the rear end of shiny brown knickers.
The inspiration for this week’s column – in addition to our reader’s suggestion – came when we found a relatively new gadget at Pacific Fabrics &Crafts in Everett: the Clover Quick Yo-Yo Maker.
The gadget is a pop-apart plastic disk that comes in two sizes and facilitates the stitching and gathering of the yo-yo. All you do is place a piece of fabric into the disk, pop it together, trim the edge of the fabric into a circle and then hem it with a running stitch. The disk keeps your hem even and the fabric in place. The holes around the edge keep your stitches uniform. And to finish, you pop the disk apart and pull the thread to gather.
Of course, you can always make a yo-yo without the aid of the gadget by cutting fabric circles and simply hemming the edges with a running stitch, pulling the thread into a tight pucker at the center and ending off with a lock stitch or two.
We used the yo-yo maker when making this week’s samples and found that it was much easier on our hands than trying to hold the hems in place without the help of the disk – we have a little bit of arthritis in both thumbs and a couple of fingers – and we were able to complete one yo-yo in five to seven minutes.
For our sample projects, we decided to deck out an old fleece hat with buttons and yo-yos, and to dress up a pair of rag wool fingerless gloves with a trio of rosettes on each cuff.
To make the hat, we broke into our button stash and selected a variety of decorative buttons some matching and some not to sew in the center of each yo-yo and around the hat.
We placed large and small yo-yos at random intervals around the hat and filled in bare spaces with the buttons.
For the gloves, we purchased a pair of inexpensive rag wool gloves at the grocery store cost, about $4 and sewed three yo-yos to each cuff. We added a bead to the center of each yo-yo before attaching it to the glove.
The fabric used to make the yo-yos was a batik-print cotton blend that we’ve had on hand for quite a while.
We’ll be featuring yo-yos again – along with some other items – in an upcoming column on bookmarks, so you might make a few extras if you’re so inclined.
Where can you get the Clover Quick Yo-Yo Maker? As mentioned above, we found ours at Pacific Fabric &Crafts in Everett, but the supply was low so you might want to call before making the trip to the store. If they’re out, they can likely order them in again for you in a short time.
We went online, where we found a few sources by doing a search on “Clover yo-yo maker,” but we couldn’t find them on the actual Clover Web site at www.clover-usa.com. We’ve e-mailed them about the item and are awaiting a reply.
The gadget appears to be very popular with quilters. A couple of online groups suggest contacting independently owned quilt shops in your area.
We paid about $6 each for ours at Pacific we bought both the large and small size but the prices we saw quoted through the online sources varied quite a bit, ranging from $5 to even $10 each for the same product.
Contact Jonetta Coffin at jrocoffin@aol.com.
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