CLAM SHELL TUTORIAL USING THE CIRCLE DIE FOR THE ACCUQUILT GO CUTTER

Some of you have seen this Clam Shell runner from a while back. It is made from the Accuquilt Circle die, using the middle circle (3" in diameter)

I am working on this quilt using the circle die again but using the 5" diameter circle.
Trust me, no fabric was wasted, what I didn't use for the large circle, the middle circle was used and what was not used for those two, the smaller one was used...very little waste.


So let's begin. For the quilt...I cut a 5" strip, this strip will be as long as you want your quilt wide. You will need a glue stick.


Lay out your strip. Take your first circle and crease the middle
place the crease on the bottom of the strip, like you see here.
you can see here where it is creased.
Then you just glue the top portion of the circle down on the strip of fabric.
Then you do the same to the next circle, you will place the circle next to each other, crease touching.
You will do this all the way down your strip. In this case I have nine circles, the next row will be eight....then nine on the third row, eight on the fourth etc.
Then you will blanket stitch around the circles to the end of the strip like you see here. As you can see, this is the back of the strip.
Now you will go and trim the back like this.
For your second row, as mentioned above, you will only have eight circles. You will crease the middle and if it is helpful, crease the middle both ways so you can match the middle crease to the top of your quilt (which will be inbetween two of the above circles)...
This is what the back looks like after the second row.
This is what it looks like after you trim off the back...now sometimes the glue has to be seperated from the fabric so you can get a nice cut...but that is not a big deal.

Also, every once in a while I measure from top to bottom on both side of the quilt to make sure I am keeping the same length and width on each side from top to bottom, from side to side.



I have not finished the quilt yet but what I did on the runner was, I cut the sides right down the middle of the circle, and bottom. Added a border to each side and bottom. Then I just did a straight stitch quilting around each circle, that is what gives it the puffy look.

For the quilt, I am thinking of cutting strips for the side and bottom but not cut the circles down the middle...I will glue the circles onto the strip and just blanket stitch around them....that is my plan as of now. I still plan to do the same quilting, straight stitching around each circle.

You will end up with alot of scraps.... This could be considered very wasteful...and you are probably thinking that using the go to do clam shells is a waste of such fabrics....

Take a look at this runner...do you think it is wasteful now? It is made from the scraps off the back of the clam shell. I have enough scraps to make more of these runners or come up with something new.

I say...let us try something new....so stay tuned!!