Crinkle Cut

I am intrigued with the grunge fabric line by Moda. As I am new to quilting, I find it challenging to use fabrics with patterns. The use of grunge fabrics gives the ability to sew a piece that is catchy and dynamic in comparison to using plain solids. I bought a fat quarter advent calendar from Grit’s Life Patchwork & Quilting Shop in Germany, as an opportunity to explore the variety of colors.

With twenty-four fat quarters came the challenge of how to use them. In my cupboard, I had a package of forty 2.5 inch strips of grunge fabric. The strips were primarily rainbow colors, where the fat quarters were a mixture of colors and neutrals. After three days of exploring patterns online and recognizing what my limiting factors were, I started envisioning how I could combine the fabric.

The first step was matching fabric. I chose twelve fat quarters in rainbow colors, two from each color with one being a lighter shade and the other darker. I starched, ironed and cut six 6.5 inch squares from each fat quarter.

Next, I spent an afternoon going through the forty strips and sorting them into color sets of threes. The idea was three colors that complimented one of the twelve fat quarters. The three strips were sewn together, ironed, and cut into six 6.5 inch squares.

The squares were then sewn together to their coordinating strip block using the two half square triangle method.

The HST were ironed opened the then trimmed to six inch squares.

At this point, I did not know how the blocks would be sewn together. I imagined the twelve squares from each color way being divided into three, making three blocks of four squares.

Looking at the three possibilities for layouts, I made the decision that blocks were not the route I wanted to go.

I went forward by laying out the HST as individual blocks.

I like the movement of option two significantly more than option one. (Have you noticed that the dark red blocks are also sewn together differently than all the other colors?)

Here is where the name Crinkle Cut comes from. With yellow as the center color, a giant crinkle cut French fry appears.

After the blocks were sewn together, I added a dark grey grunge border, which makes the colors pop.