Designed and pieced by Michelle Roberts at creativeblonde for Craftcotton, using the beautiful new Flora and Fauna fabric with a pattern by Latifah Saafir
These beautiful flora and fauna fabrics have created the most stunning clam quilt, a pretty collection of pinks, purples, and blues.
Finished size of Quilt – baby size 48” x 54”
Materials • Half a meter of each of the 10 designs in this collection from craftcotton • 50” x 56” piece of cotton premium batting from craftcotton • 40” x 44” extra piece of the teal with dark purple flowers fabric • 1.5 metres of grey textured blenders from craftcotton • ‘Latifah Saafir studios’ pattern/instructions and 6” clammy • Gutermann thread, in grey Col 1295 and pink variegated Col 4032
Cutting • (15) 6” whole clams in pink textured blend • (9) 6” whole clams in pink and white flowers • (104) 6” whole clams in a variety of the other fabrics. • Using the Latifah saafir pattern, cut the remaining 34 partial clams
Haberdashery items • Iron-away marker pen, permanent fine tip marker • Quilters ruler, rotary cutter/scissors • Iron • basic sewing supplies • pins • Baste spray
CREATIVEBLONDE TIP Mark all the points through the holes in the clammy on every clam, using a permanent fine tip marker – this will help so much when sewing the clams together
Step 1 - Making the Glam Clam Quilt Once all your clams are cut out, remember you can fold your fabric and cut out multiple clams at one time, just make sure your happy with the direction of the fabric. Cut small pieces of paper marked 1 to 19, lay out your quilt and pin the clams in rows. This will help when you are sewing the pink clams to create the heart shape in the centre.
Step 2
Begin by sewing together the ‘B1’ and ‘C’s and finishing with ‘B2’ for the first row. Then you can begin adding each row, remember to mark the points using the ‘clammy’, and these are what you use to match up and then sew together. No need for lots pins or paper piecing
The varigated pink/purple gutermann thread is perfect for sewing this quilt together
To get your head around how these are sewn together, the following photo is a must have, it shows you the placement of how you pin each clam in a row.
Step 2
Fabrics are pinned right sides together, with the new row pointing up, you then tease the clam around, matching up the points as you go. Press your seams towards the point of the clam on the reverse. Keep going until you reach row 19. I promise you it does start to come together quite quickly, especially as you get the hang of matching the seams. I held my quilt up into the mirror after each row, to check I was happy with the placement of each clam.
Step 3
The front of your clam quilt is complete, trim your quilt, leaving it ½” bigger all the way round, then the pattern requires.
Step 4
To create the back of your quilt, take your 1.5 metres of the grey blended fabric, and cut four strips. 2 measuring 9”x52” 2 measuring 9”x44” Sew these to the extra piece of fabric (teal and dark purple)
Step 5
Create your quilt sandwich, using the batting. The backing will be 1 ¼” bigger than the batting and front of the quilt Using an iron-away pen, draw 4” hearts in random places and using the same pink variegated Gutermann thread, hand-quilt your quilt.
Step 6
Press your extra fabric in half and in half again, all the way round.
Use pins or binding clips to hold this in place, while you hand-sew the binding using the grey thread
Step 7
Trim the corners, to remove the excess bulk, and create a diagonal seam
Your quilt is complete…
Made by Michelle Roberts for the Craft Cotton Company 2017
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