Attic Treasures: Rainbow Clamshells
Oh boy. What have I gotten myself into?
I got home from the quilt show last weekend all excited about my Attic Treasures bag of pastel rainbow clamshells, so I dumped them all over the den floor. I have no idea what the original plan was for these, but it seemed like some of them were organized in little color gradations. Not anymore! I divided all the shells up and grouped them by color just to see what I was working with. There appear to be 800+ pieces here! Yikes!
My conclusion- there's a LOT of peach. And quite a bit of purple. I guess the majority of the quilt will be peach and purple! I may add a neutral grey in there too, depending on the design I come up with.
I think I'm feeling a rainbow fish coming on...
There are a few stacks of large gingham check pieces mixed in, and I'm not sure I like them. They'll be helpful for practicing sewing these shapes together though!
It seems like maybe these pieces were cut out by several people, judging by the handwriting on these slips of paper. Perhaps it was going to be a group project?
I also have no clue what these rounded corner pieces are for. The curves don't match with the shells at all, so it's really a mystery to me.
After sorting out what I was working with, I decided to do some research on the best way to assemble clamshells. This was more difficult than I anticipated as well. Most of the videos I found on YouTube are for English paper piecing, or the clamshells are four times the size of mine. They're also a bit different in shape. This was the most useful video I found, and it's aptly named... she goes through the process VERY slowly. I appreciated that her clamshells were similarly sized to mine, and the Tula Pink fabric!
A few of the blogs I referenced mentioned that the clamshell is essentially a circle with two bites out of it. Mine are not. They're more oblong and look like fish scales to me. But, if they go together, who cares! If not... ummm... I'll figure something out? I scanned in one of the pieces and drew a template in Illustrator, in case I need to cut more pieces.
So yeah. I have no idea when I'll get around to working on this guy... sewing together nearly a thousand curvy scales sounds like it might take a while. But I'll see what I can do! I do have about three dozen other projects waiting for me too, but what's life without a little variety?
I got home from the quilt show last weekend all excited about my Attic Treasures bag of pastel rainbow clamshells, so I dumped them all over the den floor. I have no idea what the original plan was for these, but it seemed like some of them were organized in little color gradations. Not anymore! I divided all the shells up and grouped them by color just to see what I was working with. There appear to be 800+ pieces here! Yikes!
My conclusion- there's a LOT of peach. And quite a bit of purple. I guess the majority of the quilt will be peach and purple! I may add a neutral grey in there too, depending on the design I come up with.
I think I'm feeling a rainbow fish coming on...
There are a few stacks of large gingham check pieces mixed in, and I'm not sure I like them. They'll be helpful for practicing sewing these shapes together though!
 |
| Yikes! This is going to be interesting... |
It seems like maybe these pieces were cut out by several people, judging by the handwriting on these slips of paper. Perhaps it was going to be a group project?
I also have no clue what these rounded corner pieces are for. The curves don't match with the shells at all, so it's really a mystery to me.
After sorting out what I was working with, I decided to do some research on the best way to assemble clamshells. This was more difficult than I anticipated as well. Most of the videos I found on YouTube are for English paper piecing, or the clamshells are four times the size of mine. They're also a bit different in shape. This was the most useful video I found, and it's aptly named... she goes through the process VERY slowly. I appreciated that her clamshells were similarly sized to mine, and the Tula Pink fabric!
A few of the blogs I referenced mentioned that the clamshell is essentially a circle with two bites out of it. Mine are not. They're more oblong and look like fish scales to me. But, if they go together, who cares! If not... ummm... I'll figure something out? I scanned in one of the pieces and drew a template in Illustrator, in case I need to cut more pieces.
So yeah. I have no idea when I'll get around to working on this guy... sewing together nearly a thousand curvy scales sounds like it might take a while. But I'll see what I can do! I do have about three dozen other projects waiting for me too, but what's life without a little variety?
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