Block 3, Clamshells by Helen Stubbings. You can find her at Hugs from Helen.
The clams look like eggs in a carton and were tricky. For Helen's tutorial I've also used a very light fusible.
What I did was:
1. choose the 10 fabrics and lay them out in the rows I wanted them in.
2. draw and cut out 10 clamshells on freezer paper,
3. cut out the fabric clamshell about 1/4" larger all around,
4. go to the iron - place the fabric wrong side up and the freezer paper template wax side up and press the fabric over the top curved edge so that it sticks to the freezer paper see Step 6 diagram on instructions. Then remove the paper. Press again.
5. laid the top row down stitched then second row stitched and last row stitched.
My flowers are machine freeform embroidered. I used a piece of regular paper for my stabilizer and freeform embroidered, like quilting. Stem and leaves are zigzagged.
Enjoy!
Typical June weather, lightning, thunder and down pour. It was great to be outside today, sunny and warm. Even mama duck and her one little one was out for a paddle in the sun. The rain is making up for last year of no rain. There has been so much rain that the grass is soggy.
Speaking about the Sun, Space block 9 takes us to the Sun but not too close as temperatures are in the low millions. Hope you brought sunscreen and sunglasses and a hat.
Back here on Earth, the rain gave me the excuse to stay home and sew. Hooray, got the remaining Splendid Sampler free blocks done for my Sunny Side Up quilt.
See ya Thursday.
Enjoy!
Happy Summer Solstice! Today is a favourite day because we get just over 16.5 hours of daylight today. I just noticed that my block kinda looks like a sun.
Do you remember coming home after school for milk and cookies? Or hot days, cold milk and yummy cookies? Wasn't it wonderful? Come to think of it, that's probably why I am a cookie monster. My mom made the best cookies. Her oatmeal cookies and unbaked chocolate oatmeal coconut cookies, my favourite.
This week's block Milk and Cookies by Rebecca (Becca) Bryant. Mine is more like eggs and cheese. Hmm, looks like the mouse got to the cheese before I did.
My tips: This one I machine sewed the circles. Was it crazy? Definitely, but I don't like hand sewing because it takes me so long to sew the pieces together. My stitches are about 10 per inch. This is from doing lots of needlework and why I don't like the last thing about garment making and quilt binding. Call me persnickety. Don't like seeing hems and hand binding takes hours and hours.
I've digressed. All those little tumbler looking pieces in the outer circle, make sure that they form a tight circle without there being extra fabric that you can pinch.
I oops-eyed when cutting the stripe fabric because I wanted it all to go the same direction. But, whatever, it still works. To get the stripes going in the same direction you have to cut the pieces either both RS up or both RS down diagonally in the same direction.
The next tip is for pressing the circle seams. If you want the circle to look like it is sitting on top the press the seam to the inside. If you want the circle to look like it is under the outside piece then press the circle seams to the outside.
Happy Sampling!
