Expo Inspiration+Free ME Yo-Yo’s

Pattern: Flamingo Cove    Notice the yo-yo’s on the fish, turtles, crab, pelicans, flamingos, bush and more.  My favorite is the sun yo-yo, surrounded by rick rack.

The Lakeland Quilt and Sewing Expo in Lakeland was the highlight of last week for Suzanne Sawko and me.  We were swamped with inspiration!  Our last minute trip was scheduled too late for us to register for classes, but the vendors and quilt displays made the trip more than worth while.

Lion’s Den pattern

For me, the highlight or the event was seeing Marcia Layton’s work and her patterns.  This woman has fallen in love with yo-yo’s and has taken their use to new heights of creativity.  Used alone as well as in combination with applique,  her yo-yo’s add dimension and even more charm to her already charming creations. If you would like two free yo-yo machine embroidery designs, just leave your request as a comment below.

Lollipop Lane, with yo-yo evergreen trees, reindeer, roof line gum drops, wreaths, snowmen, and, of course, lollipops.

Though it is hard to see in this photo, the white rick rack beneath the lollipops has a line of silver metallic thread which looks just like the glitter of sunshine on fresh snow.  Just look at the glistening snowflakes, made of yo-yo’s and the same metallic rick rack.  I just love this quilt, with its candy cane stripe loopy ribbon border. Every hanging sample was just intriguing.  Here are a few more.

Country Crossing–How cute are those plump pigs and fluffly sheep?

Harvest Road–the leaves must have been made with one of the special shape Clover yo-yo makers.

Patriots Corner–What an incredible border!  I love the watermelon.

Marcia also applied her yo-yo’s to dish towels and other appliqué projects.   FYI–for fussy grammarians and old English majors like me, on Windows computers, letters with acute accents can be created by holding down the alt key and typing in a three-number code on the number pad to the right of the keyboard before releasing the Alt key.  Check out other accent options at Wikipedia  

    

The dish towels were so clever.

The quilt display was fabulous and included an entire section of antique tops.  These had languished unquilted until recently given to longarm quilters as a venue to showcase their skills.  More on those in another post.

Suzanne and I had a fabulous day.  Given the chance I won’t miss another of these Expos.  Have you attended any?  What were the highlights for you?

P.S.  Remember if you want the machine embroidery yo-yo designs in two sizes, leave your request as a comment below.