Crazy Crumb Piecing...A Tutorial

After piecing up the Bars and Stripes quilt, I had lots of snips of fabric left over on my sewing table (and floor). I always save these and stuff them in a bag, but this time I decided to use them right away to piece a pillow top to go with my quilt.

My bag of crumbs from many projects... ;-) It is packed, too.

Martha Green teaches a fast and effective way to put these small irregular pieces to use in crazy quilting. I learned this from her.

You start by chain piecing two crumbs together. Just randomly, and the edges don't have to line up perfectly as you sew them. Just make 1 + 1= 2, a long line of that. Then cut them apart and iron open each pair. In the photo above, on the left are the ironed open crumb units, (odd term, isn't it?) and on the right is part of my chain of pairs.

After all your units are cut apart and ironed open, you chain piece all your units together, two at a time, and then cut them apart and iron them open again.

At this point my units have four crumbs in them. This is still quite random.

But once in awhile a little shaping with the scissors is called for...

...as here. But mostly I personally like to just sew units together without thinking about things.
Too much.
The units get larger and larger until it is time to fit them together like a puzzle on a foundation fabric.

The edges of the large units are ironed under, then pinned into place (you can see some pinning at the bottom of the picture above), and finally top-stitch appliqued with a clear thread. Sometimes an extra snip or two of fabric needs to be added to a unit or between two units as this final positioning and sewing is done.
It really is like fitting a puzzle together....

...til you have something like this! It measures about 20" X 24".
The look to me is very old fashioned, constructed as this was like so many of the original crazy quilts were, with every scrap being used.

It is also very busy. I'm thinking I will use very simple hand embroidery--all in one colorway, all in just one kind of stitch--on the seams to try and unify things, calm them down. I've never tried that so I want to see if it will work and how it will look.

Good handwork for the road too! I'm gone until next week...Happy stitching, everyone!