I spent part of my childhood on Prince Edward Island, where I was born. My fondest memories of that place are all about food. My dad used to stop at the wharf on the way home from work to buy lobster fresh from the lobstermen. Delicious!
Sometimes we went out to catch our own food. My dad always knew where to go to find the smelts when they were swimming thick enough to scoop them up with a net (illegal, of course, so I’m sure we fished for them the proper way.) I wasn’t a big fan of the smelts, although my cat adored them. My favourite hunt-your-own dinner? Clams!
We would go out with small shovels and a bucket in the morning, after the tide went out. You could tell where the clams were hiding. There were little holes in the wet sand for them to breathe. Carefully, the shovel would go down into to the sand, and up would pop the little clams in their shells! We would rinse them in the ocean, put them in the buckets and head for home. The clams would go in the laundry sink with fresh water, to bathe the day away until we boiled the poor creatures for supper. I could eat ridiculous amounts of them, especially with my mom’s yummy lemon butter to dip them in. Dad and I always made sure that none of them went uneaten.
Maybe those memories are what make the clamshell quilt pattern so appealing to me. Recently, Jossie at Cybele’s Patch started a Clamshell Club, where she and other bloggers can connect to share their progress making clamshell quilts. I wasn’t going to join, because I thought it would be too annoying to try to cut out the curved shapes and sew them properly. I prefer to hand piece these types of designs, and that would have meant marking both a cutting line and a sewing line on my fabric. I would need a template that would allow me to do that accurately, and I didn’t have one.
Then something great happened. Linda Franz released the clamshell pattern for Inklingo! Inklingo, if you haven’t heard of it, allows you to print a template from a PDF document directly to your fabric. There’s a link to her blog on my sidebar, and she explains what it does much better than I could. I have no excuses, now. I’ve joined Jossie’s Clamshell Club, and I have printed and cut out a few of these:
Happy as a clam. A clam that didn’t end up in the dinner pot.
June 23, 2010 at 8:21 am
Just poppinmg in to say ‘hello’ because I am getting a little curious about the clamshells…..
Great memories you have about the shells and I am sure it will make your quilt very special.
June 30, 2010 at 8:44 am
Your clamshells are gorgeous — the fabrics you’re using are beautiful!
June 30, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Hello Dawn, seems you’ve got as far as I have..
I too didn’t like how mine was going and unpicked.. one of my problems was the fabric I was using but the other was the slow process (for me) of battling with those curves.. I’ve got my printed with the Inklingo too.
I’m interested in how you’ve adapted it. Did you print out the templates without seam allowances on the stablizer and fixed it to the back so you could applique the seam over.. and what type of stablizer did you use? Sorry so many questions.
Mine will either be a wall hanging or table cover.. 😉
July 1, 2010 at 8:54 am
Hi, Elly: I love questions! I printed out the templates including the seam allowances, and then I altered them a bit to match the “Lizard of Oz” method. I used a fabric marking pencil to mark horizontal and vertical lines intersecting at the centre of the template (by extending the registration marks at the edges). Then I trimmed away the seam allowance from only the top convex curve. Leaving the seam allowances in place on the concave curves provides a firm surface for the applique that will go on top of them later. The lines I draw on the template are used to make sure the clamshells are lining up properly. Once a few of them are appliqued together, you can see on the back of the work that these lines form a grid of squares (the template is glued to the back of the fabric with the lines facing up). In my “Clams on Wednesday” post, I provided a link to the Lizard of Oz instruction sheet, which describes better (with pictures) what I have done. My favourite stabilizer is Ricky Tims’ Stable Stuff. It comes in 8.5 x 11 sheets and goes through the printer with ease. It also softens immediately with the slightest touch of water. I’m really loving making my clamshells this way!
July 2, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Thank you Dawn 😉 It took me a couple of reads before the penny dropped but now I understand and it sounds brilliant… I’ve never tried RTs stable stuff before sounds like a good time to try ;)) Thank you again for your great tips. Cheers Elly