Crumb quilt #1

Last month I shared some of my scrap quilting efforts. Primarily, I play with scraps because I can’t bear to waste anything. In the last year or two Pat Sloan was talking about scraps and “crumb quilt blocks”. She was SO organized and orderly, making blocks from the leftover bits and pieces of the current project; storing in her baskets and roll around cart. Oh if only I had that tidy mindset! Working with scraps seems to generate MORE scraps. If you missed out on that whole conversation it might be fun to look back at her blog – https://blog.patsloan.com/2021/03/what-is-your-scrap-quilt-iq.html . Pat does a daily you-tube video along with writing a blog post daily….again I say…if only I had that mindset.

Anyway, I dug into one of my scrap baskets and started sewing crumb blocks with no apparent rhyme or reason. Just grab the next piece out of the bin, and sew. Most of what I grabbed out of the bin were leftover blocks, the reject blocks that didn’t measure up, odd bits and pieces cut away from the borders and sashing of quilts and stuff that came into the donation boxes that I couldn’t figure out how to clean up and sell back at the guild meetings. Anything that was just “too big” to put in the dog bed filling bin went into these blocks. You will see some bow tie blocks and spool blocks that went back and forth to multiple guild meetings before I gave up and determined nobody would buy them. I’m sure some of what I had collected were test blocks from projects and other peoples “oops” blocks. Some of these crumb blocks have a color family, others are not. Random piecing…stitch, press, square, stitch, press etc. Working with scraps seems to generate MORE scraps. I just sewed hunks and chunks together to make these blocks. When I got to around 9″ I stopped and squared the block to 8.5″.

Last blog post I think I showed you this –

I managed to sash all 100+ blocks that were in my crumb blocks container. Too many for my design wall all at once.

While I was going through all the blocks trying to find the right balance, I noticed I had a series of blocks with a pink triangle and a lot of white space. I decided to do a little “machine embroidery” embellishment on those blank spaces. Here are a few –

Those two blocks will probably appear in Crumb Quilt # 2 or #3.

Meanwhile….. Since I had over 100 of these blocks, I did a bit of sorting and pulled out all the ones with the red sashing and all the ones with the darker green and blue sashing. They went back into the box. I had to put my thinking cap on for how to put these very different blocks together and I went “SHOPPING” for just the right fabric. I bought enough fabric (6 yards) to sash at least 2 Crumb quilts. I bought 3 yards of two different fabrics. One for the darker blocks and one for the brighter blocks.

Once I sorted out which blocks I wanted, I had to decide on how wide to make the sashing with the blocks I had chosen. I wanted the blocks to float a little, so I went with a wider sashing. It also meant that I needed to remove a bunch of blocks or I would have a massive quilt. I put about 10 more blocks back in the box. Here is the result – a great size for a picnic or a twin bed!

This nice tone on tone green did the job. I think it helps unify the quilt with so many funny blocks. I used 24 of the 100+ crumb blocks for this project.

Can you spot all the blocks with machine embroidery? Here are a couple of close ups —

Notes about this quilt – the crumb blocks were 8.5″ before I added a round of sashing (various colors). All that sashing came from my 2, 2 1/2 and 3″ strip bin. I needed width of fabric to go around the blocks. Once they were sashed, I trimmed all the blocks down to 11″. (Weird number but it was working). Green sashing and cornerstone blocks are all 3 1/2″. The corner stone blocks all came from my “Bonnie Hunter Scrap Storage” bins. Bonnie refers to her system as “Scrap User’s System” . I have to rethink how I refer to my bins…..Stop Storing and Start USING!

What do you do with your scraps?? Time to start using, not storing I think! I have to say, I’ve never met a scrap I didn’t like!

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