Pretty Yo-Yo Sewing Craft

June 6 is National Yo-Yo Day, so this seems like the perfect time to share a pretty little yo-yo sewing craft. That’s what I grew up calling the little gathered circles of fabric like those used to make the flowers in the project above.

My daughter has been part of a girls craft club called Grace Girls that my sweet friend Abbie Halberstadt (aka M is for Mama) and I started several years ago, and this is one of the first crafts I ever taught them when it was my turn to host.

You can tell it was a while back, because all these little girls are nearly grown now. My Abby (on the far right) is about 6’1″ now.

The craft is super simple. You start with small circles of fabric (ours were about 3½ inches in diameter), then fold the edge over slightly as you baste around the circumference with a straight running stitch.

I always use two threads and anchor my first stitch by sewing through the knot. That way, the knot won’t just pull completely through when you pull the basting stitches tight.

Once you’ve stitched completely around the edge of the circle, pull on your thread to gather all the hemmed edge fabric into the center of the circle.

This creates your yo-yo. For the craft I did with the girls, we sewed three yo-yos in a row on a piece of muslin with a button in the middle, so they’d look like little flowers. I had already written the little verse, “Plant kindness…gather love,” on the muslin with a sharpie, and also made lines for grass and stems, which some of the girls embroidered over with green thread.

You can make yo-yos in all different sizes and even stack them, as I did for these little red, white, and blue ornaments I made for my Independence Day tree. (I keep a tall, skinny Christmas tree up all year long in my bedroom and simply swap out ornaments for each changing season.)

I had lots of fabric circles left over after teaching Grace Girls this craft, so I ended up making an entire quilt.

Or you can stitch the yo-yos together to make a placemat or pretty pillow topper, which is what my grandmother used to do and how I first learned to make yo-yos myself.

Keep On Crafting

If you’d like more craft ideas, you can peruse other fun projects here: Abby’s Craft Corner. And if you’re interested in learning the German art of paper cutting, then check out the collection of Scherenschnitte patterns and print packs I recently added to our shop.