Refashioning Update

The refashioning playdate was fun, but not especially productive. Penny set right to work, fearlessly cutting apart thrifted clothes. I took a scrap of celery green cotton lawn she discarded and held it up to the Habu cardigan on the dress dummy. Wow, a perfect match for the linen tape yarn. Too bad any embellishment would destroy the perfect minimalist lines of the sweater.

The cotton was screaming to be turned into yo-yos. I don't know how that idea popped into my head, because I had never made a yo-yo before. Fired up with enthusiasm, I cut 8 circles out and set to work. Pretty soon, I had two girls watching me, asking me to teach them. "Sure! "

The girls weren't happy with the celery yo-yos; they felt the yo-yos needed something. I brought out some glass beads and put three beads into the center of each. The girls wanted to try beads on theirs, too. The entire container of beads was upended on the carpet. The girls picked up most of them. I sewed three embellished yo-yos to one of Iris' denim skirts.

Time's up! Dinner's ready. That's all I accomplished. Pix coming soon.

Asides:

• I made the yo-yos wrong. I wasn't happy with the raw edges. I don't recall seeing raw edges on yo-yos before. A search on "how to make a yo-yo" showed me that I forgot to turn the edges under.
• View the How to Make a Yo-Yo slide show tutorial.
  
• As soon as I showed Iris the circles, she asked if they can be made in other shapes. How about a heart? Click on the link to learn how to make the "secret stitch" that gives the heart yo-yo its distinctive shape.
  

Iris was so excited about the play date, that she spent the whole morning setting it up. She wanted to play school and had set up the first three days up. Of course, to her, the first 3 days of school includes placement testing. (Big sigh.)

The other girl heard that Iris wanted to play school and immediately said, "No tests." Iris was crushed. The girls recovered and managed to come up with other things to play.