Not Your Grannie's Yo Yos

Last summer I joined Penny's Yo Yo Along. I believe the goal was to make a quilt with 1008 yo yos. I failed big time. I decided to at least create a finished product with my meager start. Here you have my "Not Your Grannie's Yo Yo Pillow Cover" using a pitiful 49 yo yos. I think that they are so happy looking though, aren't they? I used candy colors of bright pink, yellow, chartreuse, red, aqua and orange.

I followed Penny's suggestion and attached the yo yos to each other with a bar tack machine stitch rather than hand stitching them. Because I was not making a coverlet but a pillow, I cut a square of aqua linen and pinned each yo you in position, one row at a time. I then secured the yo yos to each other AND to the backing with a bar tack stitch, all at one time. It seemed to work well. The backing is and aqua with red dot (matching a couple of the yo yos on the front). And of course, I used an invisible zipper. I will save you from another invisible zipper shot since my kids are even teasing me now "Is there a zipper there? Nooooo, it's invisible!" I added the pillow to my shop.

Look at this! It's the first, not made by me, paper pieced watering can from my new pattern! My friend Dolores volunteered to test my next paper pieced pattern so I sent her this one and she whipped up this little mini quilt that afternoon. A couple of people have suggested that they are intimidated by the small handle on this pattern but as Dolores says in her blog post, it wasn't difficult and she is a relatively new paper piecer. So, don't worry!