craft

I have seen some quilt blocks that were made from using crumbs of fabric. What is a crumb and what size is it? How do you make a block with them?

Thanks,
Craft

Queenbarbiej

For me a crumb is anything shape from 3/4" to 2". Start with a straight edge on two pieces and sew them together until you have a bigger piece.
https://www.quiltingboard.com/attach...ain-1-back.jpg

and here's one I received as a wall hanging https://www.quiltingboard.com/attach..._0440-copy.jpg

zennia

It's taking your small scraps and sew them together to make a block. They are fun to make. Every block has different angles , colors, etc.

juliasb

Both of you quilts are lovely! I would have thought crumbs to be close to postage stamp sizes. It is nice to be wrong and easier to describe when giving up smaller scraps. Thank you for the explanation.

rryder

I make lots of crumb blocks and bits and pieces of crumb fabric with my scraps, it it’s at least 3/4” of an inch wide I use it as a crumb.

Rob

Cheshirepat

Do you use a foundation when doing these as you do with a string quilt? It might be fun to try something tiny...and use up some bits!

Iceblossom

Think of crumb as a variation on string piecing. Just put all the bits and pieces together to make fabric. You can incorporate blocks/pieces of blocks. You can use a foundation or not.

I don't do this style of thing myself, but I found a person on the board who loves the style and I send her boxes of my crumbs and so I've learned quite a bit about it... for me a crumb is anything smaller than 6.5" square (which is the smallest size I now keep). I keep a flat rate box by my cutting board and in it go all the uneven cut strips (ok, so I'm fussy and prefer straight edges in my storage), the bits and pieces, bad cuts, etc. that happen. I was being pretty productive for a year or two but gosh, it must be 6 months or more since I filled up this last one. A lot of what I send is probably too big for crumbs as direct use, they probably have to be cut a bit. She prefers pieces no smaller than 1.5".

There are some super videos out there.

In a bag of thrift store stuff I got was a bunch (a bag of itself) of precut fan blades, so parallelograms which I would consider crumbs. They are pretty long and I'm going to do a different small piece concept and sew them onto a piece of adding machine tape (then remove the paper). The blade colors are all coordinated and so my bars of fabric should be too, I'm planning on using it then as sashing. I often find bags/boxes of adding machine tape at the thrift store if there is an office supply or craft type section. Here's the thread that gave me that idea:
I don't get what the 'reciept' is for when making string quilts

Tartan

Crumbs for me means anything under a 2-1/2 inch square. I don’t do crumb piecing so I throw crumb scraps away.

sewingpup

crumbs can be fun.....anything bigger than 1 inch by inch I would keep as a crumb....(figure a quarter inch seam on every side leaves you with a 1/2 square if you use a one by one inch piece...which I think is pretty small....but if you want to use a 3/4 by 3/4 piece....you will get a 1/4 inch square finished....pretty cute....but labor intensive and makes for a very bulk and heavy quilt as there would be more fabric in the seams then on top....one fun idea is to make the crumb blocks by color....eg...put all the blues together to make blocks......then all the oranges...etc.....have fun...let yourself go...you don't actually need to know what the finished quilt is going to look like when you start sewing the crumbs together.....

glasqlts

I use a used fabric softener sheet to sew my pieces to. I don't have to be too fussy with a 1/4" seam. when the block is done I add some of my machine fancy stitches using up old bobbin thread. It is a win-win solution to left overs!