Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Updating Again - Yo-Yo! (Part 1)

You may recall that I am making a king-sized bedspread entirely out of yo-yos that are 2" in diameter.  You can read my first post about it HERE and my progress update from last summer HERE.  Since my last update I have finished making all of the  yo-yos necessary to complete the bedspread and two pillow shams - 2,808 to be exact.  I finished the last one while my children were in swimming lessons.  I sat there kind of feeling lost thinking, "Well, now what do I do?"  I knew there was something that I should be doing, I just didn't know what it was.  I celebrated the fact that I was done making yo-yos for a couple of days and then I began phase two - SEWING THE YO-YOS TOGETHER!

That sounds quick and easy right?  Yeah, right!  I popped all 2,808 yo-yos into the washing machine thinking that surely they would all come apart and I would have to begin again.  Blessedly I have only found one that has come apart!  You are asking yourself, "What does a pile of 2,808 yo-yos look like anyway?"  Well a lot like this:

That's a lot of yo-yos. Yo!
I wanted the pattern of the bedspread to be random so I needed to PLAN the randomness.  I prepared myself for a LONG evening and monopolized my entire family room floor.  (No other room is big enough.)  I began laying out the pattern.  I edged the entire quilt in the white on white circles that I showed in the last post.  I made extra so they are scattered throughout the pattern as well.  I know you are dying to see what they looked like all over my carpet........Take a look:


This is the view from my kitchen.  You can just see the laundry basket empty of its yo-yos in the top right corner.

This is the view looking the other direction.  I think it looks incredible!
 I just love how all of the colors blend together and compliment one another with a pop of color here and there of navy, shades of green, and white.

Um, yeah, now what.....I can't just leave them there and sew them together one at a time.  Also, I set them all out with the back/solid side up so that I could get the full effect of the colors for contrast.  That is a gorgeous look, but I love the traditional gathered/top side too.  This was my dilemma.  I'll come back to my solution to that problem later.  At that time, I just needed to get all of my yo-yos off of the floor before my children woke up. 

 My solution involved a bunch of quart-sized Ziploc bags, an unopened package of index cards, and a camera.  I sub-divided the quilt into squares.  Each square contained 36 circles - 6 rows with 6 circles each.  I then numbered the squares beginning with 1 in the top left-hand corner and working down to 9 in columns.  Square 10 was at the top of the second column and so on down and across the quilt.  I wrote the square's number on the index card, placed it next to the square, and took a picture.  Then I removed the 36 squares from the floor, placed them all into a Ziploc bag, and shoved the numbered card in with them.  This process went on for several hours.  












What was my husband doing, you ask, while I was galumphing all Gollum-like across our family room floor?  At first he watched a movie, (I don't remember which one) and then he turned to this...

Yup, Angry Birds...We have it on our ROKU Internet TV box.  WE LOVE IT!

That bird is an-gry!

As I mentioned before, I took photos of every square with the cards next to them.  I did that so that when the time came to sew the squares together, I would not need to guess where I put all of the circles.  I worked hard to keep from repeating colors as I laid them out, and I didn't want to mess that up.  (Even with all of the planning, I did end up with some like colors matching up.) I took the photos to Costco and had the pictures printed out so that I had physical photos.  The next step was to match the photos up to the numbered index cards and put them into the bags with the other items.  There were a few mistakes that I needed to correct when matching up the photos with the bags. 

Now I'm ready to start sewing, or am I?

As I mentioned before, I wanted to show both the solid/back sides of the yo-yos and the gathered/front sides of the yo-yos on the same quilt.  I solved this problem by creating this...

 I made this road map to decide which yo-yos to leave up and which ones to flip over.  The white lines represent the front (gathered) sides and the black lines represent the back (solid) sides of the yo-yos.

My road map

Did you notice that my picture is upside down?  *SIGH*  Oh well, you get the idea.  Or don't you?  If you look closely at the square below, you can see how some of the yo-yos are facing "up" and some of the yo-yos are facing "down."  The road map above helps me remember which is which. 

Some of the yo-yos are facing "up" and some of the yo-yos are facing "down."

This post is getting LOOOONG.  To find out what I did to begin sewing the squares together, come visit again tomorrow!

Click HERE to see my first post about how to make yo-yos and HERE for my first update on this project. 

I would love it if you became a follower of my blog.  You can find me HERE on Facebook and HERE on Pinterest.  Come check me out there!
 
If you enjoyed this post you might enjoy my post for organizing your Spice Cabinet.  Find out how to make your own vanilla extract just in time for holiday gifting by clicking HERE.  Get ready for Thanksgiving with some Thankful Blocks.  


Thanks for visiting!


2 comments:

The Atomic Mom said...

Oh mah gash! I would have been committed to the loony bin by now. You go girl!

Heather said...

That is going to look awesome! I love the colors you chose also :)