Yo-yo's the center of the Dresden Plates

Happy Fall ya'll!  I love to say that!  LOL  I wish we had some cool days here in TX, but it is still in the high 90's!  Yuck, give me cool weather any day!  Don't forget to enter my Birthday giveaway for a free quilt pattern here.   

For my Dresden Plates, I decided to make yo yo's instead of plain circles for the inside of my plates.  To see how I made my plate you can go here.  Yo yo's are pretty easy to make, and fun.  I took them to church with me on Sunday.  Instead of having an early morning service and then a late evening service, we have both services close together.  We have a potluck after the morning service and then evening service at 3.  That gives us time to fellowship between services.  So, I'll use that time to work on my hand stitching while I talk with my friends, I showed three of my friends how to make yo yo's, it was fun.

I decided to use my striped material for the center.  I cut a template out of card stock, I made the circle 6 1/2 inches round and traced it with my fabric marker.  My rotary cutter was too big to use, so I cut them out with scissors.

After the circles are cut out, I just hand sew a running stitch around the edge with the wrong side of the fabric facing me.

Sorry about the shadows.  Then I just pull the centers together, the same as if you are gathering a skirt.

I did something a little different here.  Since I wanted to make sure everything stuck together when it was washed, I took a piece of stitch witchery and put it in the middle of the yo yo between the two fabrics before stitching the opening closed.

I then stitched the center closed and down in the middle of my plate.  (I know, the center is "off")

I then ironed my yo yo down so the creases would look nice.  After ironing it, I put more of the stitch witchery under the yo yo around the edges, to give it more staying power.  Then I took a wet wash rag and laid it on top of the yo yo, this is what will bond the stitch witchery to the fabric, and sat the iron on top for 10 seconds, this will do the piece on the inside of the yo yo as well as the pieces around the outside edges.

The yo yo is now stuck on with the stitch witchery.  But I do not trust it to hold by itself, so I tacked down the edges, I already tacked down the center of the yo yo when I attached it to the block.  The blue is the button thread.

I went through my buttons and had some that were the same green!  Yeah!

I decided to use the turquoise thread from the blanket stitch to sew the buttons down with.

That is how I made my yo yos to finish off the plates!

I did find a youtube video on how to make yo yos if you would like to watch it.

I hope you are enjoying the weather where you are, I'm stilling praying for some cold weather.
Missy