Snowball Crumb Catcher Tutorial – a table topper for the holidays!

This table topper looks like you spent a lot of time on it, but really you can finish it in a snap because the hexagons are applique. English paper piecing is beautiful and I do that too… but I love to find ‘cheater’ projects when time is short.

This blog post has been converted to an optional PDF that’s optimized for printing. Find it here. The free table topper pattern in the blog post below is totally free to read, print, and sew! Just hit CTRL +P on your computer to print. The PDF download is inexpensive and optional.

Snowball Crumb Catcher Tutorial:

You will need:

• Coordinating fabric for the hexagons
• HeatnBond lite fusible adhesive
• Two 20” squares of fabric for the front and back of the crumb catcher. The front will be the background for the hexi’s and the back won’t show unless someone turns it over.
• A 20” square of batting. I used Warm and Natural.
• Fabric for binding. I used two 2 1/2” strips cut the width of the fabric.
• SpraynBond Quilt Basting Spray or pins for basting

Click here to download the 2’’ hexagon template for your little hexies.

Cutting:

1. Cut two pieces of HeatnBond light approximately 17”x20”. Trace the hexagon template onto one piece of HeatnBond lite 18 times and trace it 19 times on the other piece. Note: this will give you enough hexagons for either arrangement below. You won’t need that many hexagons if you choose Arrangement 2.

2. Fuse the HeatnBond lite to the backs of your hexi fabrics.

3. Cut out the hexagons and remove the papers.

4. Create a quilt sandwich with the 20” squares of fabric and quilt batting. I used SpraynBond to baste my layers together, but you could wait and pin-baste later.

Note: I removed my cutting mat and placed my quilt sandwich directly on my work table so I could iron lightly later.

5. Arrange the hexagons according to your liking on top of the quilt sandwich. You can see that I made a design with almost all of the hexigons first (Arrangement #1), but then I changed my mind and removed 7 from the center (Arrangement #2).

6. If your surface is safe for lightly ironing your hexi’s to fuse them to the background, do that now. I felt safe doing it since I had already removed my cutting mat and my table was protected by the layer of batting and two layers of fabric. After lightly touching the hexi’s with the iron here, move the quilt sandwich to your ironing board and fuse thoroughly.

If you’re not comfortable lightly fusing here on your table, you may pin the hexi’s down in order to move the quilt sandwich to your ironing board to fuse.

7. Time to applique! (sorry I didn’t get a close up picture until my binding was on… oops!)

You may sew your hexi’s down any way that you like and this also serves as quilting. Feel free to straight stitch the edges, satin stitch, blanket-stitch, or use one of your machine’s fancy stitches like I did.

I used rayon embroidery thread for a little bit of sheen. Any type of coordinating thread you will do.

8. After applique stitching/quilting, trim away the extra fabric and batting. I used my ruler to leave 1/2” around the applique pattern.

9. Sew on the binding. See my mini quilt binding tutorial here.

And there you go. Time to make cookies to go with it!

Happy Holidays!