Clamshell Design

I started to quilt my little baby quilt with an allover clamshell design

The orange thread that you see running across the quilt is my basting stitch which will come out at the end. I did pin this quilt and then ran  over it with a large meander basting stitch taking most, but not all of the pins out in order to do the ruler work.

I am using the Handiquilter Versa tool for this which makes the clamshells 2in x 4in. If you want to be super precise you could mark your quilt up with a 2in grid for ease of alignment, however that would be quite a tedious task. Following the first row of clamshells I just drew a line across the top of the clamshells to keep my design straight and also did some vertical 'helper lines' to hit the centre of the clamshells on my way back (more or less precisely). 

The Versa tool has an alignment line at the bottom of the clamshell that I used to stay on my line across the quilt. After having done almost 3/4 of the quilt I remembered that Bethanne Nemesh draws on her rulers with a Sharpie pen. Ingenious...why did I not think about this before?

I drew some additional lines on the Versa tool

I extended the centre line of the clamshell so that I could better judge the halfway point of the clamshells underneath to make sure that they stayed approximately on top of each other. In addition, I also drew in additional horizontal lines which should sit (again approximately) on top of each of the clamshells rows underneath the row I was working on. 

This made alignment much easier and ensured consistency...should have thought of this earlier which would have avoided me drawing in lines all over the quilt! The Sharpie pen can be wiped off with alcohol, but I might leave them on there...might become handy for something else.

 

Karin