Liberty Clamshell Cushion

A few months back Fiona put up this great tutorial on clamshells. I have always wanted to have a go at these and pretty much started this piece as soon as I had stopped reading!

As regular readers will know I have a large stash of Liberty tana lawn, collected over many long years. But as an extra bonus at this time lovely Ali from Very Berry Fabrics  sent me one of her Liberty Scrap Packs to try out.

Ali was the first sponsor to come on board for our Stitch Gathering Retreat and she kindly sent me a pack so that I could see what she planned to donate (I know, I know, I have the best job ever!!).

So I designed the clamshell size around Ali’s scraps so I could fit in as many as possible, along with some of my existing collection. Therefore my clamshell is quite tiny at only 2 inches diameter.

Fiona had suggested just using a strip at the top of the piece to applique your first row or two of clamshells, and then afterwards to sew them to the row before. However the tana lawn was too delicate for this, so I ended up sewing a piece of Kona to my initial tana lawn strip and carried on appliqueing on to this.

Once finished I attached some wadding and started hand quilting. I have gone Old School here, using Gutermann’s quilting cotton and quite small stitches. My usual perle 8 seemed too thick and chunky for such a small scale pattern and such fine fabric.

I haven’t quilted like this for ages and it felt quite weird. Consequently I haven’t got on very well with what should have been a relatively quick job (the cushion is only 14″ square.

However this weekend I decided this project needed to be finished and once I got going the quilting experience improved.

I used a cardboard template and a Pilot Frixion pen to mark the curves. And looking at this photo I can see that it might need a bit more ironing to remove the marks!

Here is the back, a gorgeous piece of Novella by Valori Wells that I got from my Together Circle Bee buddy Ak, who was de-stashing recently and gave away the most amazing fabric – thank you Ak, my students and I are having such fun with your rejects!

I am very happy with the finished result. With so much lovely Liberty in one place, who wouldn’t be?! If you’d like to make your own version of this then check out Very Berry Handmade’s shop, her scrap packs are really reasonable.
And this one is a keeper – it’s mine, all mine!!