Trying out crumb (crazy) patchwork quilting

I had been wanting to try crazy or crumb patchwork for a while now. It's a way of using up odd little bits and pieces of fabric to do a piece of patchwork that doesn't need to be as neat as patchwork quilts generally are. This appeals to me because I'm very bad at cutting and sewing fabric into regular shapes! 

As I understand it, crumb patchwork stitches together odd shaped pieces of fabric, and crazy patchwork is the same thing but using a mixture of different fabric types and embellished with extra stitching and so on to add more interest. 

I've been working on a few fabric projects recently and had collected together a pile of different fabric pieces so I decided to give it a go. There are lots of video tutorials on crumb patchwork with different methods and techniques. I watched a few and the one that made the most sense to me was this one, as it uses some more irregularly shaped pieces rather than just squares or rectangles.

I set myself to it, and it turned out that it wasn't quite as easy as I thought it would be! I had a few false starts and pieces that I had to unpick because I'd left myself with a hole. I found it quite difficult to work out what the pieces would look like when they were sewn together. It's also quite an active craft as you are constantly having to get up and iron flat the little pieces of fabric that you have sewn together! I had a reasonably large pile of scrap pieces but it took a lot more fabric than I expected to make my crumb patchwork piece. But I was delighted with the result! It measures about 24cm square. 

I've been making a few drawstring bags recently and they are very forgiving for a beginner sewer so I decided to make a small drawstring bag to hold my phone. The idea is to tuck my phone away at night so I'm not tempted to pick it up first thing. I was originally going to line the bag but I wasn't sure if the piece of fabric would be large enough so I didn't worry about it and it worked out fine!

I used some gorgeous shiny mermaid inspired ribbon for the drawstring. I recently bought some  drawstring toggle things which are really good for holding the bag closed - I don't know why but I only just realised that these are a thing that can be bought, they are going to come in very useful for lots of other projects like my drawstring shoe bags!

I really enjoyed working on this once I'd figured out the technique, I'm definitely going to continue saving all my scraps so that I can have another go in the future!