More About Buttons: Day 129

Thrift Store Finds

And

A YoYo Button

For Friday, May 27, 2011

A couple of weeks ago I stopped briefly at one of my local thrift store haunts to find something wonderful...a plastic bag of buttons! My luck was good, such that they were having a 50% off sale.

This button bag was originally $3, and now $1.50.

Quite a FIND...

Here are the buttons in all their glory:

I took them out one by one tonight to review the stash I had retrieved in the bin of sewing notions.
Couldn't help myself but to pile them in more or less color categories. 

The gold-colored buttons with the star pattern are amazing. They are metal,  and the star is a cut-out revealing silver lining inside that reflects when the light shines on it. Unique!
I love buttons! This was a great purchase...someone's collection of saved treasures. Some still have the thread and a bit of fabric attached. A simple history all it's own for each of these buttons.

 Though I could go on and on about buttons, I will stop and concentrate on... 

The Project Of The Day,

YoYo "Buttons"

I have been reading about the Clover YoYo Maker from various craft blogs and from looking at it in fabric stores. Though it is meant for woven fabric, I have decided that I want to try it for light-weight felted sweater fabric. (You might have guessed this, right?)

Here are my first attempts at making YoYo's:

The pieces of the YoYo Maker: the plastic "plate" (left) and the "disc" (right). 

The orange cashmere sweater is my subject, the same one I used for the Bed Buddy Cover.
The disc is engaged with the plate in this photo.

This is what the underside looks like.

The instructions say to cut around the unit leaving an approximate 1/8" of fabric extra.

Now for the stitching.
Basically the needle is stitched through the openings in the plastic template all the way around.

This is the disc side after the stitching. No change in looks here as yet.

Now the disc and plate are popped apart to reveal the stitching.
(Just wavy looking thread lines around the perimeter. A bit hard to see here.)

Pulling the thread to gather the edges together.

During the process, the edges need to be pushed inside.
I used a stirring stick which worked very nicely. 
I could have used my chopstick, but I would have had to get up from my chair and go get it several rooms away. With Katzenberg on my lap along with my needle and thread, stirring stick, and little tangerine (that's what the YoYo looks like to me) it would have been quite the task to move everyone and everything.
NOT worth the effort. Deep breath!

Here is the other side of the tangerine. A little wonky, I admit.

But the little citrus fruit looks pretty good.
Since I used the sweater instead of the recommended fabric I did expect unusual results. I think this could be used as a button. That's why this project is called YoYo Button.

I made 4 of these this evening. The last one is on the bottom. It turned out best.
They all look better on the YoYo side.

Here they are next to the card that came with the discs.
The last one is still on the bottom.
Did I mention the word wonky?
There was improvement from first to last, but I need more practice.

Any thoughts about what to make with these?
Let me know.

Have a Happy Memorial Day Weekend!