My name is Charlotte, sometimes known as Ms Lottie, occasionally as The Slightly Mad Quilt Lady. This is my blog, where you'll find me writing a lot about my quilting and textile arts and a little about my family's life in a small seaside town in New Zealand. Haere mai!

Friday, October 29, 2010

Scrappy Crumb Quilts


My scraps are getting out of hand.  But it's hard to throw them away.  As a wise lady recently said to me,"I paid the same amount per metre for that teeny scrap as I did for that fat quarter!"  And when you've collected a few kilos of teeny scraps, you wonder how much meterage there actually is in the pile.  So I pulled them all out (actually my daughter did - the picture above is her 'nest for birdies'), and decided to do something useful with them.

I'd never really heard of the name 'crumb quilts' until I read about them here, on the lovely Raewyn's blog.  I knew about the concept (sewing any scrap bigger than 1/2 inch into a bigger block, then sewing it all in together), but now they have a delicious name to go with them.  But I'm regimented kinda girl (really!).  I like order to my colours.  I also love rainbows and colourwash.  Soooo, my first step is to sort my scraps.


Then I plan to make my crumb blocks all one colour, with maybe a few flecks of a complimentary colour to make them sparkle.  So I'll have a blue block made up of little crumbs of my different blue scraps with maybe a scrap or two of orange.  A purple block with a spark of orange, a green block with pink.  Sashing?  A cream perhaps, maybe black.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  First I have to go pick up my leftovers!


Anyone else doing a crumb quilt at the moment?  Or tell me what you are doing with your scraps - I'd love some more inspiration to use them up.

4 comments:

  1. Wahoo!! Way to go!!! So pleased I was able to inspire someone!! I find crumb making SO satisfying and also 'slightly' addictive. I've been wondering along your lines of colour sorting them too; I made tiny cream ones as a background recently and really liked the effect - HAVE FUN!!

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  2. fantastic I'm not the only 'mad' one out there, well me and Raewyn!Your colour idea is a great one.I have made a crumb quilt too and loved it, but my scrap pile still looks like yours! You think it will become tiny...but NO! It grows.....so I still find myself making crumbs as a Leader / Ender project. Would it be cheeky to do colour blocks like you plan to? Would you mind? just for a change for me. My Crumbs is sort of an eye spy quilt with bits from the kids quilts and I have made a label listing the 'things' to find.Thank you for sharing.

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  3. Try out slashing .... layers of scraps between larger pieces; stitch channels through all layers then slash through layers (not bottom) ... try Googling .. lots of fun! ;)

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