Bejeweled…

Have you ever searched for that perfect project for car trips? Or carpools lines or waits at doctors’ offices? And wouldn’t be great if it was also a project that made great use of scraps?

This is Bejeweled and, at 72″ x 102″, she is all those things. (Fabrics are from Modern Whimsy, by Laurie Wishburn for Robert Kaufman.) I really designed her to be a great-looking bed quilt, but you can easily change her size by adding more columns.

As you can see, she features lots and lots and lots of yo-yos. I highly recommend a Clover Yo-yo Maker to make these yo-yos, but you more coordinated souls out there can also just cut out circles of fabric and make them traditionally. The yo-yos can be made from yardage, charm packs, or scraps. And you attach them to the columns before the quilt is assembled, so even that step is easy to pack up and take on the go. (Here is my secret, this step takes less than 4 minutes per yo-yo and is faster than the actual yo-yo making that my-dear-daughter-who-I-love-and -appreciate-very-much accomplished.)

The pieced columns of this quilt are made from either a 10″ square (layer cake) or 2-1/2″ roll-up, so it is a really versatile pattern. Ohhhh – if you had collections of coordinating scraps from your favorite designer’s collections this would be great.

My mouth waters when I look at Deborah Norris’ quilting. I could not accomplish it, but don’t need to because I know someone who can.

Since you are quilters I will show you the back…

Even better, directions are included for a lap-sized quilt using pieced strips cut from a charm pack. Here is one made from a Kona Brights charm pack with yo-yos and borders in Kona Ash.

Bejeweled will start shipping to shops and distributors late next week, but in the meantime here is what you need for the bed-sized version of this quilt:
Striped Columns – 29 (10”) squares or 29 (2-1/2” x WOF) strips
Background – 4 yards (Kona® 1387 White)
Yo-yos – 3 yards total from an assortment of fabrics (Kona® 1188 Kiwi, 1089 Corn Yellow, 1009 Azure)
Border – 1-1/4 yard
Binding – 3/4 yard for straight grain binding or 1-1/8 yard for bias binding
Backing – 6-1/2 yards
Clover Quick Large Yo-yo Maker (#8701) optional

And for the lap-sized version you’ll need:

Striped Columns – 42 (5”) squares (Kona® Bright charm pack)
Background – 1-1/2 yards (Kona® Ultra White)
Yo-yos – 1-1/2 yards (Kona® 1007 Ash)
Border – 3/4 yard (Kona® 1007 Ash)
Binding – 3/4 yard (Kona® 1007 Ash)
Backing – 4 yards (Kona® 1007 Ash)
Clover Quick Large Yo-yo Maker (#8701)
Happy sewing (and yo-yoing)!
Amanda