Because of all my sewing projects around here, dolls, animals, curtains, etc. I end up with so many little scraps of fabric I can’t bear to throw away. Lately I bought a handy little tool from Clover and decided to try my hand at yoyo making. You might say, what are yoyos? It is an old quilting technique where a quilt is covered with hundreds or thousands of little circles called yoyos. What’s great is you only need a little piece of fabric and there are all different size yoyo makers, so even a tiny scrap is usable. I decided not to color coordinate them too much but keep it playful with lots of patterns. This is a good craft to do in the evening in front of the television or on the subway. It’s a little time consuming but satisfying to quickly compile a big pile of them. See below for the how to.
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Materials
fabric scraps
yoyo maker from Clover
fabric scissors
needle and thread
sewn pillow cover
pillow insert
Instructions
1. After you’ve picked out which fabrics you’d like to use, follow directions on packaging of the yoyo maker to make a big pile of yoyos. I used the large yoyo maker which gives you an approx. 1.75″ yoyo. The pillow I made is 15.5″ using 81 yoyos. The pillow insert is 16″.
2. Once you’ve made the correct number of yoyos to fit on your pillow size, begin stitching them together. Again instructions for this are on the packaging but the basic idea is a whip stitch with right sides facing. You should stitch for about a 1/2″ on each side. Once all the yoyos are sewn together gently iron.
3. I made a quick envelope cover for the pillow out of a neutral linen. This means that the front side is a plain square (16″ x 16″) and the two back pieces (12″ x 16″) are hemmed and overlap so the pillow can be inserted. Stitch the perimeter of the yoyo square to pillow cover with a whip stitch.
