Crumb Along Started Without Me!

I came home a day late with bags, parcels (and meat) and the disaster I created by unpacking further delayed my race to the sewing machine for Jo's Country Junction Crumb Along so I'm two days late getting started on my crumbs.

Our first crumb block is wonky flying geese.  I've got a 6" square ruler so will be trimming my blocks to that size.  Here's a couple of pics of my first attempts... I may revisit making this block next week.

Hmmmm.... not so, um, well, wonky.  I try.  Honest, they start out really wonky but somehow by the time I'm done with them, they're starting to look unwonky.  Sigh.  And the effort certainly created a mess on my sewing table, cutting mat, ironing board and even on the floor (notably the path I tread between all three locations).  But I'm satisfied.  I made four somewhat wonky geese blocks and I opened all the crumb and string containers and had a great time with all the fabrics I have in them.

It may take me a few attempts to make really free form crumb blocks.  Somehow I've just got to let go of the internal perfectionist.  Up til now my preferred method of using up crumbs has been log-cabin style.

My last crumb quilt is a double-bed sized one with black sashing.

My crumbs and trimmings lend themselves to making these log-cabin style blocks by the dozens.  Maybe that's the problem.... my crumbs just are not wonky.  I do have a box full of weird triangles trimmed off charm squares after I've cut out my two shapes for long-term charm quilt projects.  And I ran off a pile of blocks mixing them with the other straighter bits.

Okay... that's better.  These look free form and I have to admit that I like this style of piecing better than the paper piecing I was doing with them.

In fact, I had so much fun making the combo triangle and string blocks that I didn't stop until I had made 15 of them.  I can tell I'm going to enjoy this project.  The only problem I can see with it is that it isn't going to result in a serious reduction of the crumb and string collection.  I'm thinking of starting a string project to work in tandem with the crumbing assignments.  There is this gorgeous string quilt I saw recently....