April showers bring May Yo-yo flowers!

At long last I have uploaded my craft photos and I can showcase my blooming yo-yo flower basket with butterflies wall-hanging. To the left is how it began, laying out the yo-yos and the basket material to get an idea of  it would go together. I’ve been saving that basket material for years in anticipation of the perfect project. I traced a basket silhouette on a folded over piece of the fabric so when I cut it out and unfolded it the basket would be symmetrical. I put a rectangle over the main part of the basket top. I used a glue stick to tack the basket fabric down. Then I used yellow embroidery floss to hand stitch the fabric down. I was trying to do a thick almost zig-zag looking effect so no raw edges show. I think I largely succeeded. To add visual interest I stuffed the top edge rectangle of the basket with polyfiberfil. I like the 3-d effect, I think it makes the basket more basket-y. Since polyfiberfil strands kept sticking out I added some gold ribbon to the basket to cover the raw edge of the stuffed piece, hold the filling in, and add an extra touch of glitz.

The flowers are all large yo-yos and flower yo-yos using the Clover yo-yo makers. They are made from scraps from all of my quilt projects past and current.  Really it is a memory flower basket of sorts. To unify the flowers I used the same tan button in each one. It was a bit of a gamble-I wasn’t sure I’d like the effect and it wouldn’t be easy to undo if I hated it. Luckily, I think the buttons work for this design.  I used different scraps of green fabric and the large heart yo-yo maker to make little leaves. I think the leaves really fill out the basket and give it a great shape. I think this pattern would be fun with more colorful buttons and maybe done in a smaller scale, perhaps with more embroidered details. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get my act together and sew enough to justify starting an Etsy store.

The butteflies were made with the Clover large butterfly maker, very thin black rick rack, and black braid. The black braid is stitched to the butterfly with black hand quilting thread as the “body” and the black rick rack  is folded in half then stitched down as the antennae. I really love how the butterflies turned out and I kind of went nuts using them. I will definitely be using them in projects in the future.

The binding is olive drab grosgrain ribbon machine stitched down. One of these days I’ll actually master corners but until that day I’ll just keep putting cute things on the corners.

You can’t really see it in this picture but again, I put a little green frog button in the lower right corner with my initials and the year.  You also can’t see but it’s hanging from a single bit of gold ribbon. I have pockets on the back with a length of cardboard keeping the wallhanging basically straight.

Enjoy the fabric flowers and take time to smell the real ones outside!

P.S.

I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program here at Technicolorlilypond, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. If you buy this lovely: Clover Small, Large and Extra Large Round Yo-Yo Maker,
I will get a small advertising fee. These Clover yo-yo makers are fabulous and I love using them. There is no limit to what you can do with yo-yos and I hope you have fun with them. Even if you don’t pick a set up here, I hope that it helps you. If you do pick it up through my link, thank you very much; I hope that these fees will help support me as I continue writing and doing creative things here at Technicolorlilypond. Thanks for your support!