Category Archives: Clamshells

More Arcs for Pickled Ladies

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I realized that it’s the middle of the month and no new Pickled Ladies have been stitched, so last night I put together some arcs for another dozen or so of them. They go together quickly and it’s even faster to add them to the clamshells, so I’m hoping to get these all stitched today.

Monday I met up with another Inklingo’er, who is here with her husband.  We had a prime spot in front of the fireplace in the lobby of the hotel at which they’re staying and stitched and talked our way through a good part of the day.  Today will be more of the same.  Monday I worked on the triangle bands for another Farmer’s Delight block, but today it will be the Pickled Ladies.  I’m behind again on replying to comments and visiting blogs, but will catch up on Wednesday.

When I’m upset about something, I have a tendency to throw out things that I don’t mean to toss.   Last week, when Lester had the stroke, I apparently threw out my finger pincushion.  It’s hard to believe just how lost I was without it.  Thanks to my friend, I now have a new one.  This one is going to be very carefully taken care of and tucked away each evening after I finish stitching so that there’s no chance of it getting tossed out!

Lester is definitely on the mend.  Monday night he was spilling out of the kitty bed as he stretched and then slept in this position.

An hour or so later and Smudge had taken over the kitty bed.


Rainbow Flower & January Clamshell Report

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The Cranes Circling Flowers at Dusk, aka rainbow flower, is something I can’t resist stitching!  So much so that, when I couldn’t sleep because of a migraine, I was fussy cutting six more flowers and cranes from another fabric at 5:00 a.m. on Saturday.  I have everything cut and printed now for the rest of this piece and hope to have the main piecing finished by mid-week.  When it’s finished, we’re going to have to find a way to photograph it.  The light at this time of year makes for not great photographs.  I can’t wait until spring comes and the roof garden reopens!

When I pulled out the storage container with the Oriental prints and batiks to choose the fabrics in this, I also hauled out the container with striped and directional fabrics. I have a feeling fussy cutting some stripes for this block will be the next thing I play with, although I’m also very tempted to do something with shabby chic fabrics.

I don’t have much to show for the January clamshell report.  While I’ve made lots of the black and white arcs for the Pickled Ladies, I only put together two of the pickled clamshells.  To see the list of and links to participants in the Clamshell Club, go to Cybele’s Patch.

On the weekend, I got a lot of the cream hexagons for the POTC blocks stitched.  At this point, I only need to stitch together the ones needed for two more blocks and that part will be done.  So I feel like progress is being made.  We were taking trying to take a picture of a finished POTC block when Smudge decided he needed to help. You can just see a bit of the block that he’s lying on.

Lester was having a snooze.

Two Pickled Ladies

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While I’ve made quite a few of the arcs for them, I haven’t put together many of the Pickled Lady blocks this month.  So I thought I’d best get a start on making some for January with these two.

Our weather has been incredibly topsy-turvy the past few days.  We’ve gone from relatively mild for mid-January to bitter cold  to rain and mild and now we’re heading back into the deep freeze for a few days.  At least the rain that fell got rid of most of the snow that lingered.

Smudge decided to sprawl out on the loveseat.  This winter weather definitely means sleepy kitties.

Lester was curled up in a kitty bed.

December Clamshell Club Report

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The months are flying by — I cannot believe it’s already time for another Clamshell Club report!  The Pickled Ladies had a few new additions in December, but nowhere near as many as I had hoped.  The count is now up to 56 Pickled Ladies made.  I’m going to keep going until I hit around 110 and then lay them out and decide how much, if at all, bigger I want to make it.  It’s hard to think of not making them as they are so much fun!  I’m clearly out of design floor room to lay these out now, so next month will probably only show the new additions.  Once the numbers are up to 110, I will then start working on fussy cutting and printing the setting pieces made up of vertical half and horizontal half clamshells.

To see what other members of the Clamshell Club have reported for this month, go to Cybele’s Patch blog post here.  I’m looking forward to seeing what the others have done.

It’s hard to believe that this is my last post for 2010.  The year seems to have flown by.  Thank you to all who have shared my quilting obsession this year and I hope to share more with you in 2011.  I wish you all a safe and healthy and Happy New Year.

Lester is going to ring out the old year in typical laid-back Lester fashion; having a snooze.

While Smudge is going to treat us to one more of his classic almost headless cat poses for 2010.

Arcs for the Pickled Ladies

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One of the things I’ve been working on is stitching the arcs for the Pickled Lady blocks.  I’m trying to get lots and lots of them ready as stitching the arcs to the clamshell body takes next to no time.  Unfortunately, my wrists are still not cooperating so pressing the arcs wasn’t possible before the picture was taken.   All the black triangles are cut for at least another 40 arcs while the white pieces are being cut as I need them.

It was bitterly cold here on Wednesday.  So cold that the first cold weather alert of the season was issued by the city.  It seems awfully early for this horribly cold weather and makes me wonder what January and February are going to be like. When it’s bitterly cold, I resort to my mice slippers.  They are toasty warm and I really don’t care how ridiculous they look.  My mother bought these slippers for me well over 15 years ago and I treasure them.  They only come out in the winter so they’ve stood up quite well.   Watching the cats’ reactions to the oversized mice on my feet makes me laugh.  The sight of them makes Mr. Q.O. laugh.

Smudge greeted me Wednesday morning by chirping for his breakfast and doing figure eights around my legs.  Huge improvement.  Getting him to eat on his own has been a challenge, so hearing him ask for breakfast felt like a huge achievement.

Both of the kitties were spending time either in the cat beds or on the couch, staying warm.  Lester looked at the windowsill ever so briefly on Wednesday afternoon but I think he could sense it was chilly and decided to head for the couch.

Pickled Ladies Again

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While I have been working on the pink and cream quilt and playing with the irresistible Storm at Sea blocks, I’ve not been ignoring the Pickled Ladies.  Four more ladies were completed Thursday night and I have a stack of pieces cut and waiting to be stitched for another 15 or 20 of the pieced arcs.

Making the Storm at Sea blocks has taught me something — that I have absolutely no self-control when it comes to stitching those blocks!  Once I had printed the shapes on the third fabric, I just had to make some of the blocks with that fabric.  So now I’m thinking that printing the shapes on the next fabric is something that I will only do when I’ve finished off the pink and cream top and at least another 8 or 10 of the Pickled Ladies.  Otherwise, I just know that I’ll want to drop everything and make a few blocks with that fourth fabric.

At the same time, I’m trying not to start another Winding Ways quilt.  I’ve wanted to make another since I made this wallhanging back in February and have ideas on my “want to make” list.  But lately, Wanda at Exuberant Color has been showing the Winding Ways quilts she has been making and it’s very, very hard to resist!

Lester was lounging on the loveseat Thursday night.

While Smudge was snoozing on the couch.

Fussy Cutting/Printing – Lots of Photos

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There have been a few questions about how I fussy cut and print the florals for the Pickled Lady blocks so I thought a short tutorial might be the best way to describe the method I use.   Lester is watching rather intently.

When I decided to make the Pickled Lady blocks, the first thing I did was print one of the clam shapes on a piece of plain paper which I had cut to the size I would be using.  Once that was done, the interior of the shape was cut out along the stitching line and I had my window template.

I identified a few flowers on this piece of fabric that were going to be perfect for fussy cutting.  Once that’s done, I start looking for one of the flowers that’s near the edge of the fabric.

This is where the window template comes into play.  Once I’ve found a flower that I want to fussy cut, I place the window template over it and move it around until the flower is in the centre of the clamshell.

If you look closely at this shot, you’ll see that I’ve got the quarter-inch line on the ruler placed on the printed ruler line on the paper.  When I cut out my window template, I cut off about an eighth of an inch along two of the edges of the paper so that I could use the printed ruler line on the paper to line up with rather than trying to line up the edge of the ruler with the edge of the paper.

Here I’ve cut along two sides of the fabric, once again using the quarter-inch line on the ruler lined up on the printed line on the fabric.  The printed line is directly above the cutting line of the shape and that gives me the perfect placement when it comes to ironing the fabric on to freezer paper and getting it ready to print.

The selvedge is still attached.  I leave it on when I’m fussy cutting as sometimes there will be a flower at an edge that I want to use and I will need a sliver of it to have a large enough piece to iron on to the freezer paper.  I know it will be cut away once the shape is printed, so I don’t worry about it.  In this case, the majority of the selvedge will be cut away even before pressing it to the freezer paper.

Once I’ve cut the top and right side, I remove the window template and cut the bottom and left side of the fabric piece.  At that point, all I need to know is the size of freezer paper I’m using to cut the fabric to the right shape.  Then it’s simply a matter of pressing it on to the freezer paper and printing my shape.  Here you can see that while the selvedge was still attached, once I cut out my shape there will be none of it left.

Once that’s done, it takes only a minute to cut the shape out and then start stitching.  Smudge hopes you found this as relaxing as he did.  In fact, he was unimpressed when the printer started as I think it woke him up.

A bit of stitching and a  few minutes later, I had a Pickled Lady block finished to add to the stack.

The back.

Very Little Stitching

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That’s what has been going on around here lately — very little stitching.  Lots of printing and cutting, though.  And one pickled lady to add to the mix, but that’s about all there is to show.  It seems like November is prep month.   Made myself laugh thinking about it, but it’s as though I’m getting ready to hibernate for the winter and want all the preparation work done so that I have lots and lots of pieces printed, cut and ready to stitch.

One of the things I’ve been working on  is printing the Storm at Sea shapes.  It’s a good thing that the initial idea of going with the 4 batiks got changed to using 11 fabrics as I found one of the original four has a flaw that runs the entire length of the piece.  There’s an area that’s about half an inch wide that has less than half the thread count of the rest of the batik.  I’ve had the batik now for months and wouldn’t even contemplate taking it back, so I’ve cut the fabric to get rid of the flaw, but it’s possibly going to make it tricky to get the number of shapes I want from that particular fabric.  Seems like my Storm at Sea quilt is undergoing some changes yet again.

There’s a group of florals that need to be fussy cut/printed for more Pickled Ladies. Two more of the large pink stars are done for a total of five finished, so there’s only one left to piece and then printing the shapes for the small pieced cornerstone blocks. More preparation work.

The weekend paper comes with lots of catalogues from various stores, particularly at this time of year.  I had been looking at them while Smudge was curled up at the other end of the couch when Lester decided to join us.  He wanted attention so made sure that the catalogues weren’t accessible.

I’m not sure that Smudge was all that thrilled about having Lester’s tail draped over his.

And Then There Were Three

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Blocks stitched and shapes printed for three projects on Wednesday, that is.  Project one, the big pink and cream stars.  One more finished so there are now three completed.  Tuesday night I started thinking about different settings for the big pink stars and have decided on one that will include 6 of the large stars and some other elements.  Three more big stars to go and then the setting and it will be done.

The pieces printed and cut out for the remaining three big pink and cream stars.

Project two, two of the Pickled Ladies done.

Lots of clamshells printed and cut out for project two.

Lots of the shapes needed for the arcs also printed and ready to cut.

Project three, the Harpsichord Quilt.  One new block pieced and pressed.  Smudge was determined to be part of this photo — you can see his shadow.

Lots and lots of black and gold octagons and the little coloured squares printed for project three.

While my printer wasn’t going quite as quickly as in the video I showed yesterday, it was humming along for about half an hour last night.  I like working on projects in groups of three.  Getting the freezer paper sorted out made it all so easy.  In next to no time I had the fabric pressed to freezer paper and printed for all three of  this Wednesday’s projects.  Perhaps if I keep doing this for the next couple of weeks I can have all the pieces printed and ready to stitch for another 3 or 6 projects.  What other ones?  The Summer Picnic Dish, also known as pickle dish.  The Rouenneries Drunkard’s Path — I have another 3 sets of charms to print for that one.  The Storm at Sea is definitely on the list for next week.

For the most part, the cats had no interest in what was going on.  Lester had a nap.

Smudge was looking a bit bored, I think.

October Clamshell Report

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Time for another Clamshell Club report.  The months seem to be flying past!!  This month I made some progress on two clamshell projects — Clam Balloons and the Pickled Ladies.

In October I was actually able to tear myself away from the Pickled Ladies and add another clamshell diamond block, so now there are three.  Two of the three are quite similar in that there’s a lot of the same fabrics in them, but once there are more blocks done and they are separated from one another I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.   Mr. Q.O. says they remind him of hot air balloons which led me to a name for the quilt, Clam Balloons.

I have been so focussed on stitching the Pickled Ladies that I forgot just how much fun it is to put the clamshell diamonds together, and how quick.  Two evenings of stitching and the diamond was done.  Getting enough of the clamshell diamonds done to be able to sort out placement is a goal I have now for the end of the year. Then I can start adding the black sashing where necessary as well as the setting pieces and hopefully have this done rather quickly.  The Clam Balloons won’t be a large bed quilt, but rather a good-sized lap quilt.  I think it will be a great one to have in the winter as all those lovely bright colours that will make me think of summer.

There are now 43 Pickled Ladies, with another 35 or 40 waiting to be stitched. Some exotic Asian florals have been added to the mix.  There are lots of little pieces waiting for me to stitch to make the arcs, and I plan to work on those this evening. This will be a long-term project as I’m pretty sure that I will keep going on this until it’s a bed-sized quilt.

One thing I really do need to do is sit down and figure out how many I’ll need for a bed-sized quilt and make some window templates for the setting pieces that I’ll use to square it off.  Having the window templates will mean that I can print and cut those setting pieces as I’m printing and cutting the clamshells.  And I know myself — if I leave that all to the end, I’ll keep putting it off and putting it off but if I have all the pieces ready to stitch, then the quilt top will get finished as soon as there are enough of the Pickled Ladies.  I have a feeling I have less than a quarter of the blocks I’ll need for the quilt, so I’d best get back to work on them!

The cats have had a very relaxing weekend.  Smudge:

Lester: