How to Make Clamshell Quilt Templates and Sew Curved Seams by Donna Hussain

"Lamplight" by Donna Hussain

Quilt completed after completing a clamshell class by Monica Calvert.

When learning to quilt I easily mastered sewing quilt blocks with straight line seams on my sewing machine. All I had to do was place the fabric pieces right sides together, then line up my ¼” sewing machine foot with the edge of the fabric for stitching. There are hundreds of quilt blocks that require such minimal sewing skill.

Straight-line stitching, the basic skill required to make any quilt.

To machine-piece a quilt block with curved seams, like Drunkard's Path, requires more skill. As a novice quilter, I joined a clamshell class given by Monica Calvert at a quilt shop near my home to learn her curved seam techniques. I had no intention of actually making a clamshell quilt until Monica demonstrated the amazing versatility and design potential of the block during class sessions.

Clamshell Row

A template is used to cut clamshell shapes. Clamshell templates can be made at home using graph paper and a compass. Draw three circles with the same diameter as illustrated below. Circles with a 9” diameter are recommended for starters. As you gain skill in sewing curves you can work with smaller clamshell shapes.

Drawing a Clamshell Template

Cut out the clamshell shape that you have drawn on the graph paper. This is your template but the graph paper is too flimsy for practical use. Use the paper cutout as a pattern to draw the clamshell shape on light cardboard, a manila folder, or plastic sheet. A clamshell template cut from these materials will be stiff enough to last for repeated use in drawing clamshells on fabric.

To make fabric clamshells place your template on the wrong side of fabric and draw the template’s outline with pencil or pen. This line will be your stitch line so make sure that the line is dark and easy to see.

In cutting out the fabric clamshell you must allow for a seam allowance, so cut the fabric ¼” away from the stitch line. For ease in later sewing, it is helpful to widen the seam allowance to 3/8” along the pointed tip.

Drawing and Cutting Lines

To practice sewing clamshell blocks together:

• Select two fabrics. Cut out two clamshells with nine inch diameters from each of the two fabrics.
• Sew the pointed ends together of one color set as illustrated below. (The red clamshells.)
  

Preparing to Sew Clamshells Together

• Mark the mid-point of the convex curve of the clamshells to be inset. (Blue clamshells). You can determine this mid-point by folding the clamshell in half.
• The next step is to inset the blue clamshells into the concave curves of the red clamshells, as illustrated. To do so, place the sewn-together red clamshells face up. Turn a blue clamshell face down so that the stitch line on the back side is visible. Poke a pin through the mid-point of the blue stitch line through to the midpoint of the seam joining the red clamshells together.
• Join the ends of the red and blue seam lines together with pins. Divide the space to be pinned together in half again and again, each time poking the pins through the blue stitch line to the red stitch line. Many pins will be necessary to flatten out all potential puckers.
• Machine stitch along the seam lines removing pins as you go.
  

Pinning Clamshells Together on the Stitch Line

The design possibilities using clamshell blocks are endless. Keep adding clamshells by sewing convex curves to concave curves until you reach the size you want for your quiltop.

Possible placements of clamshells in a quilt design.

You can vary the fabric and color of the clamshells or cut clamshells from fabric pieced together. I suggest that you draw a clamshell grid like the one below and experiment with different coloring patterns using crayons or felt pens.

Clamshell Grid

When using clamshells you may mix the blocks with other patchwork blocks or appliqué sections.
The shape of four clamshells sewn together reminded me of Indian designs, of oil lamps hanging in a mosque. In "Lamplight", I used a black clamshell to represent the lamp base. I visualized perforations in the lamp sides to allow light to pass through. I quilted a candle flame in the top clamshell which is pieced. All of the blocks beneath the arch are nine-inch clamshells, though some along the sides were trimmed to make a straight edge. I consciously used darker fabrics for the area under the lamps, and lightened the background colors close to the flame. The purpose of the Islamic arch in the quilt is to place the lamps in context.

Give clamshells a try. They are easier to sew than you may think!



California quilter, Donna Hussain, has exhibited in major quilt shows around the country, authored books, and is a regular contributor to Fiber Focus. Click on her name to see all of her past articles.



The photo shows Donna with her husband, Pascha.

How to Make Clamshell Quilt Templates and Sew Curved Seams by Donna Hussain

How To Make Bias Tubes For Quilt Top Appliqué by Donna Hussain

The most common use for bias tubes when making quilt tops is for the appliqué of stems in floral bouquets. The tubes can also serve as window sills, chair legs, door frames, vines, fence posts, tree trunks, and lettering. I have also seen the tubes used to appliqué woven baskets, a jungle gym, the reins of a horse, and the rope of a swing. My favorite use of bias tubes is to sew interlacing designs on quilt tops. (See previous post, Interlacing Design for Quilt Borders)

Interlacing Design Using Bias Tubes

Although bias tubes can be purchased at most fabric stores the colors are limited and buyers generally have only one choice of tube width. Sewing your own bias tubes has many advantages. You can choose tube fabric from your stash to match the colors of your quilt. The cost of making tubes at home is minimal, and you have a variety of width options. In this article I describe the construction method I favor when sewing home-made bias tubes.

A bias tube begins with a strip of fabric that is cut on the bias. Why cut on the bias? Because bias strips stretch. In most quilting projects the fabric is cut on the straight of the grain to avoid stretching so that quilt blocks come out square. In bias tube appliqué stretching is an advantage. It allows you to appliqué the tubes in curves and circles without puckering. In addition, the threads on a bias cut do not unravel as they sometimes do when fabric is cut on the straight of the grain. So I favor tubes made from bias strips for straight-line appliqué as well as for curves.

A common method of making a bias tube is folding a strip of fabric with right sides together, then stitching the raw edges together. The sewn tube must then be turned inside out to hide the seam, often a struggle. I recommend an easier process for sewing the tubes, the use of bias bars available at most fabric and quilt stores. Bias bars are available in plastic and metal (your choice) and usually come in packets with at least three bars of different sizes ranging from 1/8” to 2” wide. For most of my projects, I favor the ¼” bar which makes a ¼” tube. The width of the bias bar you use determines the width of the tube you sew.

Metal Bias Bars

To make a bias tube, start with a square of fabric cut on the straight of the grain.


Align the 45 degree angle mark on your plastic ruler with the edge of the fabric. Use a rotary cutter to make a bias cut.



Measuring from the bias-cut edge, cut strips of fabric for use in making bias tubes. The strip width will depend on the width of the bias bar you are planning to use. Here is a helpful rule of thumb:

Strip width = (bias bar width x 2) + ½” (for seam allowances)

For example, if you are using a bias bar ¼” wide, cut 1 inch wide fabric strips.
( ¼” x 2) + ½” = 1”)

You are now ready to sew bias tubes from the fabric strips. Here are directions.

1. Fold each bias strip in half lengthwise, wrong sides together. Press.



2. Raise your sewing machine needle to the up position. Place your bias bar in a folded, pressed fabric strip. Place the bar and strip under the presser foot aligning the fold with the outer edge of the foot. Adjust the needle position to the right of left as necessary to encase the bias bar snuggly. Once the needle position is set remove the bias bar. If you start sewing before the bias bar is removed from the folded fabric you risk breaking your needle.

(If your sewing machine does not have the feature of a movable needle position you can move the folded strip to the right or left of the presser-foot edge until the needle encases the bias bar snugly. Remove the bias bar. As you sew, try to keep the same distance from the fold to the edge of the presser foot.)

3. Sew the length of the folded strip keeping the fold aligned with the presser-foot edge. The use of lightweight thread will reduce seam bulk.



4. Re-insert the bias bar into the sewn tube. Trim the raw edges as close to the stitching as possible (1/8” or less).



5. Twist the seam to the middle of the bias bar. With the bar in the tube, press the seam allowance flat against the tube. Both metal and plastic bias bars can be safely pressed though the metal bars do get hot. Be careful.

6. Remove the bias bar and press the tube again, once with the seam side up, once with the seam side down.

When you are ready to appliqué a bias tube to your quilt top you have several options for hiding the two raw ends of the tubes. You can simply turn under a tube ends and stitch them in place. Or you can hide the end under another appliqué element such as a flower petal. Sometimes ends can be sewn into seams.

If you use bias tubes in innovative ways in your quilting, please leave a comment. I would like to hear from you. If you have photos of your work using bias tubes, leave the link so we can all come visit!

January 19, 2010

A reader asks "When you need an extra long piece of the bias strip & you are sewing them with wrong sides together, how do you connect the pieces to get a longer piece?"

When crossovers needed to hide the introduction of  a new tube segment are far apart (as illustrated below) an extra long bias tube may be necessary in order to sew an interlacing pattern. 

Quilt diagram

This extra long bias tube is made by joining two (or more) bias strips with a seam.  This joining must be prior to pressing the strip in half lengthwise in preparation for making a bias tube. Unfortunately this seam will create bulk that will reduce the tube’s flexibility for sewing curved designs but will work for straight line sewing.  I minimize the bulk by placing the two strips at right angles with right sides together, then machine stitch a diagonal seam.  Trim the seam.

California quilter, Donna Hussain, has exhibited in major quilt shows around the country, authored books, and is a regular contributor to Fiber Focus. Click on her name to see all of her past articles.



The photo shows Donna with her husband, Pascha.

How To Make Bias Tubes For Quilt Top Appliqué by Donna Hussain

Karoda's Quilted Poetry: The Design Element of Words

Words on Fabric, Postcard by Karoda

by Karoda (aka Karen R. Davis)

I never thought of myself as a visual artist until a few years ago. My first calling was that of a poet which I embraced at a young age, but after years of dealing with pulmonary disease as an adult, I found myself in a space of not being able to hear the poems inside of me. Hearing is essential to a poet. Instead I started dreaming in images and seeing inspiration in quilt designs in architecture, from reading literature, etc. What I was dreaming and seeing intuitively I knew to be quilts. Much of where I started in 2003, when I jump-started this journey for the 2nd time, felt like learning to walk when I really wanted to just dance (similar to those teen-age years when I wanted to grow up too fast). I often was side tracked by responding to the work of other quilters and what I liked…I wanted to try every technique and not miss any of the fun. I worked small, not wanting to commit in size to a technique that I hadn’t mastered or enjoyed. I still have much of those small studies around wondering what I’m going to do with them.

Words, dye and circular quilting as design elements.

Juanita Yeager, my quilt guru, had planted the idea of doing “series” work and keeping a journal and working a bit larger. I begin to pay attention more closely to my body, thoughts, and emotions and what I responded to with passion. Quilts with text, particularly hand writing, excited me. After seeing the quilts of Angela Moll, it still didn’t strike me to do it in my own work. The turning points started at the end of 2007 when poet Estella Majozo invited me to be a part of the Artist-In-Revolution Poet’s series, a community arts project conducted from her downtown studio. I had the month of December and although it had been many, many years since I did a public reading, I didn’t have any new work to share and was somewhat reluctant, but that experience showed itself to be the fire I needed to begin my second series work, aptly named Poetry Series. I immediately started writing my poems onto my hand dyed cloth in hues of red, green, yellow. The colours where chosen to align with the African American cultural flag except for the yellow which is the colour for spirit based on the flag Rastafarians made world famous. These colours communicate vibrancy and life to me. Drawing upon my culture and heritage, making the collective meaningful in a well integrated way personally, has been a preoccupation since my early teen years and something I committed to developing as I matured and this is being interjected to what I do visually.

Superimposing layers of dye and letters, with an applique focal point.

I wanted this series to come from the deepest part of my interior and in order to make sure I stay in that space, I answer questions I pose to myself around why and what for each step in the process for The Poetry Series. Allowing some words to show through and others not, I ask myself why and what does it mean to me…when stamping on the circles, I repeat the questions, and so on for the following layers. I know that it will never be possible for the viewer to know all of my answers or most of them, but that is not why I do it. I have to answer the questions as a way of getting and staying in the interior space I want these quilts to emerge out of.

"Answer the questions..." Words exploring design.

The second fire for The Poetry Series came while attending a workshop with Leslie Morgan and Claire Benn in Ohio where I learned how to print and write using dye paints and how to evaluate my work to achieve more complexity in the layers I put on my fabrics. The third fire came when I took a very basic intro class in casual lettering with Laurie Doctor. In the workshop with Morgan/Benn I was working with freedom and a wide range of motion in writing and with Doctor it was more about focus and control...opposite skills that provide me a wider range in selecting how to place my poems on the cloth.

Words in the background, giving form to pattern.

My daughter asked me what was the point of writing for it not to be legible. I’m not interested in the poem being completely legible or read in its entirety. For me, that would be a book. I’m interesting in my handwriting being used as an original design element and the viewer seeing the writing as a clue for the quilt’s foundation and as part of the mystery in it. Handwriting is so personal. People can identify you by it. Handwriting is a very intimate and experts in the field can infer personality traits by examining an individual’s handwritten marks.

"Handwriting is very intimate."
-Karoda

Also, the making of these quilts is the embodiment of Sankofa, a concept that translates into knowing where you’ve been in order to progress forward. As I read and re-write my poem onto fabric, it becomes an act of breaking open the seal on my present and future in merging the literary and the visual.

Word and quilting swirl.

So far, I have 3 studies and one completed quilt and two laying on the cutting table that need a binding, and fabrics on the design wall being auditioned for the next one. While working on this series, I’ve concluded that constructing poems and constructing quilts is very similar…weighing the pauses, periods, and words in a poem, its rhythm and texture, and evaluating the effectiveness and intent of a poem is no different from weighing the hues and values of colour, the spaces, shapes and lines, the rhythm and texture, and the effectiveness and intent of a quilt. I don’t know or want to know where this will lead, but I know I’m committed to writing on my cloth and using my poems as a foundation for a long time to come because it feels like the me I love the most.

Bringing the elements together in color and quilting.

***the quilts in the Poetry Series can be viewed at my website and I have documented my journey in my blog.




Find more photos like this on Fiber Focus

Karoda has been an active member in our Fiber Focus Group. Clicking on her slide show will take you to her page there.

Karoda's Quilted Poetry: The Design Element of Words