I’m a member of the San Antonio Modern Quilt Guild, and we were fortunate enough to have Latifah Saafir do a trunk show AND teach 2 awesome workshops! I was super excited…the clam shell style quilt has been on my quilting bucket list since I first started sewing, so this was a great excuse to get it done. I immediately signed up for the workshop and picked my fabrics out after I got the pattern and templates. I painstakingly cut out all of the pieces, labeled them, and organized them all into little ziplocs, until I would attend the workshop. I had the finished quilt in mind for a very special friend and was excited to gift her a really cool quilt.
About a week from the workshop date, my grandmother’s health was failing. She passed away, and the funeral was scheduled for the same time as the workshop. I missed the workshop and didn’t touch the pieces I’d cut for a few weeks after. Once I started the quilt, I thought about my grandmother often. I’m not crazy about piecing curves, but I must say that it was kind of a healing feeling to sit and sew without really thinking about anything. It gave me a chance to think about relationships and friendships and how much people can impact your life.
Quilting the finished top was even more fun that putting it together. After doing a little bit of research, I found that many of the clam shell quilts are quilted with just an all over design, without much attention paid to the individual blocks. I definitely didn’t want to just do edge-to-edge quilting.
Latifah’s pattern is seriously so simple to follow, and her templates are to die for. They are very mindful of how curved seams should be constructed, and here’s something even more awesome–NO PINS NEEDED!!! I won’t lie…I didn’t believe that at first, but after sewing a couple together, I tried it without pins, and–life changing.
Here is a little more of the quilting–not really anything too difficult, but I felt it gave a better effect than an all over quilting design.
Above is the top with no quilting or binding–I absolutely love how this quilt came together.
And then this was the finished quilt after binding. I shipped this beauty off to my friend in California and hope she uses it until the thing falls apart! I must say, Latifah did an amazing job on the pattern and tutorial and I can’t wait to make my next Glam Clam quilt.
