Crumb Quilting Adventure - How to Start Piecing the Blocks | Ep. 1

hi everyone it's me Darlene I am so excited we are going to start from quilting I was going to say that I've never completed a project with crumb quilt blocks but I really think that I have a quilt that does qualify as a crumb quilt because I did make blocks with just tiny bits and pieces however those were crazy quilt blocks sewn on a foundation don't think I've done pieces not on a foundation like we're about to do so here's the deal this is not something that I can show you all in one video there are several ways to put the pieces of crumb quilts together and I also have a way that I think that I haven't tried yet to make what looks like a crumb quilt ish without really putting all kinds of tiny pieces together we'll talk about that another time so if you think you like the looks of a crumb quilt but you have no desire to do what I'm about to do stick around because I might have something that you like better in the very near future crumb quilts it's made with the crumbs of scraps things that people would just sweep off onto the floor the pieces can be as big as you want especially if it's something that you really don't think you'll have any use for you can put this in your chrome quotes pile and you can cut it as needed or you can use it for strips and I will show you what I'm talking about you can also keep pieces that are very tiny I know one woman that I saw on YouTube she keeps anything that is over 1/2 an inch square that friggin tiny I do like tiny but I don't think I'll be keeping anything that tiny I always put my fabric scraps in a basket next to me and no pins or paper or anything goes into that because the idea is that can all be cut up and use that stuffing for small stuffed animal toys or different things like that you know it's always a good idea but have I really done it no I haven't just about I'm throwing things away but I generally have not been using cotton for the things that I make but I have been lately you know because I sell the cuts of cotton so a lot of times I have pieces left over and I've been tossing those so I just went through my bin and I pulled out a lot of 100% cotton strips like this you know when I trim or even out the side of fabric stuff like this keeping all that stuff like this some of these are like leftovers from things I was experimenting with or you know pieces left over from quilt block tutorials that I made for you guys only two things have been pulled out of my tub of scraps that I showed you guys yesterday and it's this and a piece of this that tote filled with treasures is too new for me to part with much of it yet I have to get used to it all first so I have a nice variety of things and I do have some bigger pieces that I can cut down but I also have some you know nice small pieces different things and you really want a big variety to get started with and I have these sandy Pro you will remember this I once asked her to save me her cotton scraps so I have a bag here of some of Sandy's from hey sandy so I have some nice little like pink pieces in here and some green just very excited to start all this so here are the rules to Chrome quilting there are no rules here are some things you might want to unlearn first of all don't get hung up on ironing every little piece that you are about to put in a crumb quilt because you will be ironing forever with that set I have my iron set up right next to me on the table because I'm not a fan of finger pressing but I might become a fan of it I like to at least press the pieces open but you don't have to there are people do entire chrome quilts without using an iron they use wrinkles pieces they just flatten them out when they open them they finger press another thing is you have to get used to just ironing seams to the side and yes they will get bulky at places because you're going to have sometimes seams going in the same direction and they'll be right on top of each other and it makes it thick and bulky but there's no way you want to open all the seams on this because it would take forever the other thing you might have to unlearn is you don't want to be worried about what goes with what anything goes you can have all kinds of weird prints touching each other and big pieces little pieces crooked pieces anything goes and you can do this as you please some people like to as soon as they have scraps after a project they like to hurry up and turn those into blocks or at least into pieces you know they just like to do it as they go others will just wait and then just spend you know week so I'm just making a crumb quilt I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to like to just do this as I go and I may turn the camera on and sometimes just chat with you guys about something while I'm putting pieces together I really think I'm going to enjoy this series I hope you guys do too and I'm sure I will learn many tips and tricks along the way that I will teach you as we go another thing you have to decide in advance is if you work on just one particular project usually the scraps will all be similar so if you make like a crumb block or two those blocks might look a lot alike and they won't match anything else that will be in the quote that's fine others might wait until there's more of a variety or even take yardage and cut just some other pieces to add more color or whatever interest into the blocks again anything goes I am going to be doing 100% cotton quilt cotton for this particular series I also have a ton of India cotton from the tapestries that I used to use for fabric for tunics for women I actually did a video once upon a time I remember sitting here and just chatting with you guys and was putting some pieces together I have them but I don't think I'm going to include that in this I might do a whole crumb quilt at some point with just those pieces I don't know you can also do this like a crazy quilt using any kind of fabric you want that's my favorite book mixed fabrics however cotton is by far the easiest to work with so we're going to start with cotton who knows how long this series will last I might actually complete a project I might not I don't know but we're just going to get started so there are several ways to put your crumbs together one way is to have like a strip of fabric and you sew pieces to it like creating strip sets another way is to just take two pieces and do some chain piecing I'm going to start with that because I like that idea I might put some on strips also today but let's just get started and I'm just going to show you the basics I have some pieces here I actually really like to include some very small pieces because I just think it makes it so interesting I'm just going to cut some of these strips into some smaller pieces and it's going to give me a chance to talk to you about the process as we go so see this is very wrinkled now I do have the iron right next to me so I can go ahead and press this but I'm telling you there were people who would not they just put these things together with no fear I'm a little bit fearful I think I was being punished for ironing I had overfilled my iron and the water just poured all out now I have like this right here can you see a little tabletop ironing board right next to me so that makes it very convenient it would be better if it was to my right because I'm right-handed probably would be able to make some room right here we'll see as the series goes on I will learn what's more come stable for me all you need are two pieces of fabric and you need two straight edges now when I need a straight edge I don't mean it has to be like at a right angle I just mean that see this is a curved edge that's not straight this is a straight edge for the most part this is a straight edge for the most part I can see there's a little piece here that's making it not perfectly straight I don't care about that I know I can just put my two pieces of fabric together and as long as the top one it's kind of straight I'm good the point is you're just going to take two pieces of fabric without putting much thought into it you're going to put them together with a straight edge if you really want this to be straight you can go ahead and just cut it straight you're going to be doing much of the work right at your machine so let's just put those two together and I'm going to sew where's about a quarter of an inch seam allowance a little bit smaller you don't really want a large seam allowance because you're going to be working with lots of little pieces and it's going to sell hello pedal where are you I'm not taking that off I am going to grab two more pieces I don't care what the pieces look like looks just something little let's do this and this together so let me let me turn it this way put my straight edge always put right sides together I'm going to put that there I'm going to sew those two pieces together by chain piecing like this you're going to save tons of thread because you don't have to like pull thread and snip each time now I don't need to go down this whole tail so I'm just going to like you know move that to the side I'll start two more pieces let's do these two together you can you know move that just a little bit if you want and let's do these two together and let's go with these two and let's do one more now I want to show you see how this has like a frayed edge to it and it's got threads if the threads are loose or whatever sure you can take them off you're going to be doing tons of trimming after the fact so if you have like a lot of thready pieces don't think you have to trim them all and make them all nice you can do that later so I'm just going to go with this one and I'm just going to use it as is so we have all these little things that we have put together now and I'm going to snip them apart and this is where you can open and finger press finger press just means you're just going to press it with your fingers this is where I kind of like to just hit that with an iron so I can just open them I could even stack them on top of each other if I want and I will just bring those to my ironing board I just think it makes it I don't know a little bit easier especially when you're looking at something like this you know that's a long strip and this just a little bit on this side really doesn't take too long to just hit that with the iron and I don't mean pressing to perfection don't worry about which way the seam goes it usually has a way that it wants to go like see this one wants to go this way that's how I'm pressing it I got all those pressed I mean it took literally I don't know 15 seconds and it made me happy now again some people will just sit and sew and make tons of these little pieces you know just that a to pieces put together and then the next day press them off whatever you do whatever you feel like doing now we have choices again what you can do is take two pieces and find two straight edges and sew them together the other thing we can do is we can work on a strip the thing about working on a strip is it starts to you know put one color into various pieces so it makes them a little bit more matchy-matchy but you can do just a couple on one strip and then cut them off let's do a little bit of it just so I can show you what I'm talking about okay I have a nice pink strip here one edge is like kind of curved but this edge is straight so I'm just going with this straight edge I don't care about the curved part so I'm going to just take this and I'm going to take any one of my pieces here I'm just going to find a straight edge I could use this edge I could use this edge if it's not like really a nice straight line for you you can just trim it now I have a nice straight edge right sides together I'm just going to put that down and going to stitch leaving it right there now you can see here that I have this piece and this is long with this point I'm going to just trim that off I can save that crumb and I have again some choices I can put it this way or this way I'm going to go this way so let's just straighten that off well you got a straight edge let's put that down and let's just stitch next how about I just make this straight this way and cut that off okay have a straight edge there go with that I've got a nice big straight edge here and we have plenty of room let's just put that whole thing there and like I said I could have stopped using this pink strip at any time and switched to something else but I think I'm going to have a lot of variety so I don't care okay so let's see I'm going to trim this this way so I have a nice straight edge and that's going to fit on this strip okay I'm going to stop there now before cutting this apart I'm just going to the iron and I'm going to just fold that each piece like this and press and press and press I'll show you sorry about the lighting but see I just have my stripped down and I'm just going to press each one of these back like that and while I'm right here now what I'm going to do is cut these apart let's look at this first piece there's a straight line going there so let's just trim that pink off this is a crumb I'm keeping that this one's going in this direction so let's just go like that so now we have a block that looks like this that will be put together with something else this is how we build now this one is that rounded curve at this point let's just go ahead and cut straight up to at least give a partial straight line there I don't care about the curve at the top yet see here's a big piece now if you wanted if it's too big for you you can always cut this down and make little pieces this is a smaller piece if you still don't like too much pink like that there look get a little too patch now this gets saved you can do whatever you want straighten this out now at this point if you want you can you know make that like that even it up a little bit this one's going in that direction and straight now see here is that little frayed edge that I said don't worry about because see we're going to trim it now and like this look at these lovely pieces that we have already isn't that exciting let's continue okay at this point now these all have the pink I love that but I'd like to spread that pink out in whatever project I end up doing so I'm not going to put all of these together but what you could do is just find two straight lines sew them together and then you trim but let's just start another set trying to find some smaller pieces okay same thing I'm just going to put two pieces together sorry about that I attached this long piece to this piece but I'm not you know doing that step right now where I'm putting everything on one long strip so I'm just moving that over I'm going to take two other pieces so those two together as long as you have two straight edges that's all you care about and if you don't have two straight edges yet cut them to make two straight edges they don't have to be the same length or anything okay is a straight edge is a straight edge see the bottom fabric is longer so I'm just going to stop at that top fabric let's do another one one more let's put two long anyones together so I'm just going to move that over and put this one here I'm going to knit these I'm going to press and I'll be right back I don't know about you but I'm having fun all right so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to start taking some of these pieces that I just put together I'm going to match them up with a piece that has the pink now one thing is if you really want to make a quilt a crumb quilt and you would like to have a dominant color you can always buy some yardage and cut strips of like black or blue or whatever and just try to incorporate that into each block you have to decide how big you want your blocks to be so now I have to decide I'm going to put two blocks together now this is pretty much a straight edge and so is this so let's just stick these two guys together and again I don't care how it turns out because everything gets trimmed so let's just do this don't waste time doing any back stitching all these seams are going to be cut anyway and sewn over again now see that strip of purple that we had see how cool that is it makes a nice little narrow piece in there I love the looks of that so let me just put this aside that will get pressed let's find another one with the pink and without the pink this one we have like quite a curve going on and I see some fabric bunched up there so let's just get rid of that that's up to you if you want to keep this as a crumb or not oh I came so close to tossing it I didn't yet I didn't want to lose sleep over it if I think this is too big like I said I can trim this let me trim it this way am i under the camera I hope this is a whole beginning of another block here doesn't matter if it fits or not but let's go with let's do something like this let's go trim it a little bit more okay so I'm going to put these two straight edges together now I could be chain piecing again but I'm too excited to wait so now I have a nice block like this and again if I want to cut some of this off I can but you can leave some big pieces I mean you know it's whatever you feel like let's do another because I'm addicted let's put this oh let's put that there I'm going to cut the selvage off we don't need that guy in that so let's put this right here that's going to make a nice little pink strip in there and when you're sewing over a strip if you want you can purposely make it crooked so that the line just gets to be really thin I mean it's really pretty and interesting when you have like you know just like say if it was just this much of the pink showing you know what I mean jelly beans now see I'm not trimming this yet I'm just going to you know press that do another let's get these guys together now see this purple strip there you know it's nice and narrow it's going to be even narrower in a minute let me see I'm going to do it down here let's really make that narrow so I can show you ooh look how narrow that little purple strip is now I mean it's like an eighth of an inch do love put this together like that remember all you have to do is go as far as the top piece no need to keep sewing if you're not actually sewing anything together right and of course now this will be trimmed and we have room for one more here we do let's put this little guy here at the bottom that's pretty cute okay let me go press these and I'm going to show you one more thing once you start getting bigger pieces like this you can just continue to you know trim them and add them together or you can just take a piece and add another single piece of fabric to it like I could just take a strip here and just do that or again I could make like a strip set where I could just add one piece after another onto this so that a bunch of blocks have this color you can add something wider if you want whatever you want to do if you are aiming for very small blocks obviously you'd want the crumbs to be tinier my crumbs are pretty big and another thing you can do is if you really do want tiny crumbs but you don't want to deal with the tiny pieces of fabric is you make pieces like this and then you just cut strips and that gives you little tiny pieces you can cut in any direction and it gives you little tiny pieces that are sewn together but that you're not dealing with little tiny pieces let's look at this for instance this is a pretty big piece a pretty big piece these are big pieces that I can go like this and I can go like this I can trim it here I can trim it here now this gives me still a fairly decent sized piece that I can add something but it's made up of what looks like four tiny pieces only we didn't use pieces that small to begin with so it's just really fun and it's very creative now where can I put this on I want to attach that to something let's attach it to this this is pretty long doesn't need to be I'm going to on this side just take this little piece that I just cut and I'm going to put it right there now at this point I'm going to show you I'm going to open this up I can hit it with the iron if I want to with the iron very close to you you're going to find it's very easy to press and now I can just trim it this way and this way and now that little piece that we created where is it it was this right I don't even remember yes it was these pieces here now they find that they're attached to something else and we can add that too let's just put just onto a piece of this that'll be pretty like that I'm not going to decide right now what size blocks I want to make I think I'm going to stop here I just wanted to give you an idea and I think you understand that you just keep putting things together any old way you want just remember straight edge to straight edge you can't go wrong don't worry about if they're the same size you can just put things like this this is not the same length you so when you open you just cut to make another straight line and when you do cut don't worry that if it cuts something beautiful that you created that bound to happen you can try to plan like I would like to keep this little purple strip so I might not want to so something here because I'm going to have to trim and that's going to be weird so I might want to put that there I love the looks of that let's do that before I forget now this edge is not perfectly straight but I know I can start there and I can just sew straight line I'm that good going to hit that with the iron I'm having trouble staying under the camera for you guys now see I like that it's just very interesting and I can you know make a straight line here I can straighten it here and here's an example of what I was saying if I straighten this here you know going to have just a little bit of the leopard showing that's fine that piece of leopard will go somewhere else so let's just stop here for now or let's just stop the video I don't think I can actually stop slowly I just love this I will you know get some more pieces made up and then you know the next time let's make some actual blocks I'll just show you how to square them up and you can decide if you want sashing or not maybe at some point when I have a couple blocks I can do a digital quilt on the computer so you can see how that looks just so fun absolutely start saving your crumbs thank you so much for watching I'll be back with more soon bye

Channel: Darlene Michaud

Views: 371,015

Rating: 4.863997 out of 5

Keywords: Darlene Michaud, Sanford Maine, Peanut Gallery, crumb quilt, crumb quilting, catwomanmn, darlene michaud quilt, crumb quilt tutorial, crumb quilt instructional video, how to make a crumb quilt, what is a crumb quilt, crumb quilt piecing, easy crumb quilt, quilting, scrap quilt, scrappy quilt, scrappy crumb quilt, postage stamp quilts, crumb quilt blocks, crumb piecing, sewing, quilt, crumb quilt block, crumb quilt square, crumb piece quilt blocks, crumb quilt patterns

Id: SRxDHqjfCgA

Length: 28min 5sec (1685 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 17 2017