Hearts for community

Ongoing through April 30, 2020

For a couple years we hand-crafted hearts and put them up in our community on Valentine's Day, but this year we will again distribute them (and other items) as our contingent marches in the Northampton Pride Parade on May 1, 2020.

2019: These hundreds of hearts, with The Hartsbrook School paper tags attached, were warmly received by parade audience. Thank you all who helped make them and the rainbow finger-knitted garlands!

2018 hearts still on tree outside sanctuary church in Amherst 

Because making the hearts is heartwarming in the middle of winter, and heart-shaped things appear in January everywhere we look commercially, we are making them now and will continue to make them until May. Hearts made of wax, wood, jute, wire, beads, etc. as well as yarn, felt and fabric... anything that is relatively sturdy for storage and handing out would be wonderful.

If you can donate fabric, felt, yarn, wool roving for felting, or other natural materials for making hearts, please leave in the box in the Hartsbrook Hall foyer. If you need materials to make hearts, please help yourself from this box! There are some paper patterns for shapes.

Feel free to make hearts at home and place in the basket by the main office anytime on or before May 1, 2020.

For reference: Hartsbrook heartburst

Yo-yo quilt 2019

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 story of fabric yo-yos

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.