This year we decided to make a yo-yo quilt as our group project for a fundraiser. We learned how to make the fabric yo-yos during Thursday morning community crafting sessions, and then a few nimble-fingered parents and grandparents hand-stitched hundreds of them at home or on the go. (You can carry them with you and make them when you have a few free minutes!) Karen has gathered all the yo-yo squares that everyone made, she and Kelly laid them out in a pleasing pattern, and Karen and her mother will sew them into a quilt, ready for the raffle drawing in September! Tickets are available now.
We will be raffling off this quilt in September to benefit Hartsbrook!
The ruched fabric rosette known as a yo-yo in North America and a Suffolk Puff in the British Isles and elsewhere is a curious little thing.
A yo-yo is produced by forming a fold on the edge of a fabric circle with a running stitch, and then pulling the thread to form a gathered round. It can then be combined with others to produce an “open-weave” quilt top, or used singly as an embellishment for three-dimensional appliqué.
It is one of those novelty techniques that’although closely associated with quilts—does not of itself produce a true quilt. Many yo-yo “quilts” have no batting or backing, and are more like coverlets or throws. Even those that are attached to a backing are usually tied rather than quilted. Nevertheless, quilters love yo-yos.
Most commonly associated with the 1930s and ‘40s, yo-yo quilts of that era frequently mimic hexagon mosaic patterns popular at the time [see our granny hexagon blanket project 2018], such as Grandmother’s Flower Garden. Yo-yos were also used to create remarkable pictorial quilts, such as Texas Under Six Flags created by Leila Chaney in 1936 (pictured), which features over 10,000 silk yo-yos of varying sizes.
(continues, click link to see full article)The Yo-Yo quilt was a popular style of quilt making in America from the 1920-40s. Yo-Yos, or tiny circles of fabric, were gathered up at the edges and sewn together to create a three-dimensional effect. Yo-Yo quilts were popular because women could carry the little circles of fabric with them and make Yo-Yos whenever they had a free moment. Another way to explain the popularity of the Yo-Yo quilt may be its association with the toy called the Yo-Yo, very popular in the 1930-40s. There are many theories or ideas about how long the Yo-Yo has been in existence. But we know that a wooden toy with a string looped around the center axis was developed in the Philippines over 100 years ago. Some people believe that the Yo-Yo comes from the Filipino word for “come-come” or “return”. In the 1920s a man named Pedro Flores brought a Filipino Yo-Yo to the United States. A businessman named Donald Duncan bought the Filipino Yo-Yo Company around 1928. In 1932 Mr. Duncan received a trademark for the word Yo-Yo.
Source: https://museums.alaska.gov/QuiltExhibit/quiltspdf/YoYo.pdf
"Yo-yo quilts were popular in the 1930s and 1940s, and we see lots of lovely examples sewn with fabrics from those eras. Some were structured, with the rosettes arranged to form a pattern, but many of the examples are scrap quilts."
- The Spruce Crafts blog
Internet resources:
https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/how-to-make-a-yo-yo-quilt-2821444
https://www.guidepatterns.com/how-to-make-a-yo-yo-quilt-super-cool-instructions.php
https://www.quilts.com/sfancy/suzy-s-fancy-the-story-of-fabric-yo-yos.html
A Pinterest board of yo-yo quilts: https://www.pinterest.com/purplebug61/yo-yo-quilt/?lp=true
Basic instructions with our real quilt start.
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