Pinwheel Crumb Quilt Block: A Fun No-Measure Block!
This is a fun no-measure Pinwheel Quilt Block that uses your small fabric scraps (also known as crumbs) and an improv crumb piecing approach!
This is a great quilt block for clearing up the leftovers of your last quilt project.
Table of Contents
What is a Crumb?
Not sure what a crumb is? It’s basically the leftover little bits of fabric that result when cutting your fabric or quilt blocks for other projects. The ones that you can still sew a seam in are crumbs.
Some quilters would say they need to be squares or rectangles but I don’t agree – any shape small scrap is a crumb to me!
I have lots of other ideas for these sorts of scraps so do check out the other tutorial links at the bottom of this post.
Fabric Requirements – Pinwheel Crumb Quilt Block
- 4 Focus fabric triangle shape crumbs – no set size, but big enough you can sew a seam on all 3 sides.
- A pile of crumbs and strips in your chosen background color – I used shades of white.
How to Make a No-Measure Pinwheel Block from your Crumbs
Step 1: Gather your Crumbs!
For this block we are making an improv-style pinwheel as the focus for the block. For this we need 4 triangles in a color (or multiple colors) that contrasts with the background fabric you’ve chosen.
For the example block I picked two grey and two purple triangles.
I didn’t measure them but they were approximately 1″ – 2″ across, yours can be larger or smaller as long as you are comfortable sewing a seam on all 3 sides.
Because there is no set size for this block your crumbs will determine the finished size.
After you have your 4 focus triangles you will need a pile of crumbs in one background color to make sure your pinwheel really stands out.
These fabric scraps don’t need to be all the same fabric but I like to use all the same color – so for example a mix of whites or white on white prints, or a mix of blacks, greys, etc – whatever color contrasts with your focus triangles.
Again I don’t measure this – a good handful or two of crumbs and leftover strips is usually enough and the more you have the larger you can make your block (or you can make more than one!).
Step 2: Pair Focus triangles with background fabric scraps
Start by laying your 4 focus triangles in a pinwheel formation – I forgot to take a photo of this with purple/grey triangles but see the photo below for an example with green scraps.
Next, we need to fill in the background fabric by making units from our pinwheel focus triangles.
If you have background scraps that are similar-sized triangles that is a great place to start but if not just pick any crumb or scrap that has one side as long as the longest side of your triangle.
Pair all four focus scraps with four background scraps.
Sew right sides together with a ¼” seam and press.
Step 3: Trim Straight Edges
This is the key to making crumb units fit together – the trimming!
Once you have your 4 units pieced layout your pinwheel and see what bits of background fabric need to be trimmed off or added to enable you to join it to the unit next to it.
I forgot to take a photo of this step but it is in the video tutorial for this post – so you can watch that if you need a visual – it’s at the end of the post!
You don’t need to measure at this stage either – just trim your units to give you new straight edges to join to.
Step 4: Join Pinwheel Units
You may need to add background fabric crumbs to different sides of your units to allow them to be joined to each other without cutting off your triangle points.
Once you have 4 similarly sized units you can join the top two and bottom two units to each other and then trim and join the top of the pinwheel to the bottom.
At this point, you want to have a look at your seams to see if you can nest them or press them open to avoid bulk where the 4 units meet in the middle.
You will notice not all the points of the triangles are touching but it still looks ‘pinwheel – like’ which is all we are going for here.
You can take the time to make everything meet, but you can also choose to not stress and let it be a bit more freeform like this one.
Step 5: Surround your Pinwheel
Once the inner pinwheel is constructed we just want to surround it with background fabric to add some lovely background crumb interest and to make our quilt block a bit bigger.
You can use leftover strips or large crumbs for this or piece crumbs into strips. If you need more instruction on crumb piecing see my tutorial- Crumb Piecing: No scrap to small.
And if you want a fun way to prepare crumb strips in advance see this post: Scrappy Strips – Sewing Scraps to Adding Machine Paper.
You need four strips that are the length of each side you are going to add them to. It works well to do this one at a time like a log cabin or courthouse steps.
So for example add a strip to the left side of the block then one to the bottom or top, then to the right side and then to the top or bottom whichever doesn’t yet have a background strip.
If it helps think of your improv pinwheel as the quilt top and the background fabric as the ‘border’.
And again – if the written explanation isn’t helping do check out the video version below!
Step 6: Trim your block to size
Lastly we just need to trim the block to a square. I use a square ruler for this and cut the largest block I can from the size I have pieced.
If it is less than 6” square at this point I might decide to add further strips around my block to make it bigger.
Finished Quilt Blocks
These are 3 pinwheel crumb blocks, two are 6” square and one is 7”. If I wanted to join the two different sizes I can just add another background strip to the smaller block to make it long enough to join to the larger block.
This is why I don’t worry about the size of the blocks to start – this block is more about using up oddly shaped scraps and having a play.
More Crumb Quilt Block Ideas:
- One Color Crumb Quilt Block Tutorial
- Fun Crumb Quilt Block Idea – Use your Solids!
- Easy Double Orange Peel Quilt Block!
