Really Crumby Stuff

Five Crumb Quilt Tops

This year I tried to tame my crumbs (itty bitty weirdly shaped scraps). 

I made it a Rainbow Scrap Challenge  (RSC ) project.  Each month I dug through several big boxes of crumbs and sorted out the ones that were the color of the month. Then I sewed them together and made several different blocks.  This week I assembled those blocks into tops that will be donated when finished. 

Slabs with Heart

48 x 60

I first sorted out the biggest crumbs that were straight edged and made a twelve inch slab block around a 3 or 4 inch heart made from red scraps. 

Crumby Yummy Candies

From Cathy's Confectionery 

56 x 64

After the slab blocks were finished I used the rest of the crumbs to make close to 4.5 inch strips of fabric that I later cut and trimmed into 4.5 inch squares.  I had a lot of white/neutral bits and pieces that I used up for the backgrounds of these blocks and I used 2.5 inch scraps to make the HSTs that are the "candy wrapper" ends. 

 Crumb Stars

from a galaxy far, far away.

40 x 56

 The stars are eight inch blocks with 4.5 inch crumb centers. For the background and star points I used scraps in the chunk bin in complementary colors if I had them and if not I cut into yardage.  I have small end pieces and remnants usually less than 1/4 yard of TOTs, solids and blenders set aside for use in donation quilts. 

Holy Mackerel!!...it's the legendary Crumb Snatcher fish!...a whole school of them. 

39 x 55

Sometimes the crumb fabric strips were a little shy of 4.5 inches used in the Crumby Yummies and Stars so the fish were made from 4 inch squares of crumbs. 

It was a fun way to use crumbs and it was fun to see how many quilts I would have at year end.  Next year I think I'm going to concentrate on string scraps and selvages but not separated by color. 

I still have small boxes of  black and neutral crumbs I'll use in a couple of different quilts and I'm still sorting through half a box of crumbs and throwing them into bins of warm and cool crumbs.  But I'm trying to avoid adding to the crumb box by making crumb stars if crumbs are left over from any project.