In June, Barbara Brackman (a heroine for quilters) had photos of a fascinating Clamshell variation on her blog, which she called “Unknown Pattern.” Some quilt blocks have several names, but this one is so rare that no names have been documented.

Before Inklingo, it was a challenging design to cut and sew.

Monkey and I think of it as Clamshell Pickle. Whatever you call it, Inklingo is so perfect for it that I don’t think you will be able to resist at least one of the three new collections—small, medium, or large. 

No templates, no measuring.

Just print the shapes on the fabric. The lines won’t show in the finished quilt and everything will fit together perfectly.

Thanks to Inklingo, the triangles and the curves can be sewn by hand or by machine.

If you are looking for a portable project, the triangles are easy to stitch, moving continuously from one seam to the next without breaking the thread. If you prefer to sew by machine, the arcs can be chain pieced.

By hand or by machine, this pattern creates a stunning impression.

The big centers cry out for fussy cutting, don’t you think?

Despite the odd angles and curved edges, the shapes are easy to cut. Just follow the line with a rotary cutter or scissors.

All three shape collections include complete directions for sewing by hand or by machine. Pressing instructions are also included, so your points will look wonderful.

The design possibilities are endless.

The rest of the info is on the web site, 
   •  6 inch
   •  9 inch
   •  11 inch
   •  main Clamshell page
and there is a special introductory price until September 7th.

I think you will have a great time sewing these shapes, no matter which size you choose.  —I did!

The email notifications for subscribers is still broken, so please pass the link to this message along to your freinds. Thank you!

Linda & Monkey

PS  New to Inklingo? Start here with free triangles, diamonds, and squares.

If you are looking for something else, there is a Search feature at the top (above the header), so you can find other messages in the archives of All About Inklingo.

It was a beautiful summer day in Burlington yesterday. I had just finished the Inklingo Hexagon Quilt Design Book (free!) and I needed to unwind. I decided to stitch a few hexagons on the front porch. 

There was a lovely breeze and entertainment. As you can see, friendship took precedence over sewing this time.

Click to play.

Good things happen when you sew on the go.

There have been many wonderful private comments about the new Design Book. That makes me feel great. Now we need some public ones! 

  Please tell everyone you know.

If you would like to help spread the word about Inklingo, this is a good link
http://lindafranz.com/shop/hexagon-quilt-templates/5

• Please tell all your friends.
• Write to every Internet group you belong to, and tell them there is a Hexagon Quilt Design Book ($20 value) free from inklingo.com.
• Tell quilters at your next bee or guild meeting.
• Tell everyone at the local quilt shop, because they can sell Inklingo downloads now too.
• Put this video on your web site or blog.
• Give 1 – 5 stars to Sewing a Grandmother’s Flower Garden Quilt on YouTube.
• Give 1 – 5 stars to Friends & the Blue Chair on YouTube.
• Subscribe to the All About Inklingo blog, and tell your friends to too!

Tell them Inklingo is the quilting tool we’ve always wanted. Use your own words. Short is best. Some of my recent favs are: “Inklingo ROCKS!” “I’d give up my rotary cutter before I’d give up Inklingo.” “I wouldn’t be sewing at all, if not for Inklingo.” “Inklingo makes machine sewing so much more fun.”

You don’t have to actually grab anyone’s ear, but if you do, do it gently,
like this little guy.

We hope you will help spread the word, so more quilters will know about Inklingo.

I think we’ve found the best way to sew hexagons, don’t you?

Thank you for visiting.

Linda & Monkey & Monkey’s Friend

PS  You can put How to Sew a Grandmother’s Flower Garden Quilt and Friends & the Blue Chair on your own blog or web site just by copying the “embed code” from YouTube.

PPS  If you are looking for something else, like Jane Austen, Lucy Boston, or machine piecing, please use the Search box (up at the top). There is a lot of good stuff in the archives of this blog.

Click to play.

And your next stop: 

If you’ve already started a hexagon quilt or Grandmother’s Flower Garden (GFG) with English Paper Piecing (EPP), we think Inklingo will turn everything on its head.

Don’t despair. Your EPP GFG does not have to be a UFO. There is help in the archives. Type “rescue me” in the Search box at the top (above the header) or click here.

Print, cut, sew. It’s that simple. 

Skip the tedious steps and have more fun sewing. We think you’ll agree that Inklingo is the quilting tool we’ve always wanted. 

This video and the Design Book are things I have wanted to do for a long time. If you would like to put the video on your web site or blog, you can. Copy the “embed code” from this link.

I hope you like the Design Book and video. Comments or suggestions?

Linda & Monkey

PS  If you’re looking for something else, the Search feature up there (above the header) will help you find it in the archives. If you don’t find what you’re looking for, please let me know.

Clamshells are HOT! Monkey and I couldn’t resist preparing a shape collection for sashing.

If you like Clamshells, you will love this.

There are six different lengths of sashing to print on fabric. They fit with Inklingo Clamshells 3.0 inch and the Inklingo Clamshell Edges 3.0 inch.

I don’t know anyone who would tackle this without Inklingo nowadays, but a very famous set of Clamshell bed hangings with sashing was made in about 1730. It is in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Search for item number 242-1908 on the V & A web site. You can also see it in Kaffe Fassett’s Museum Quilts (2005) on pages 44-49.

The effect of the curves is lovely, and it is a very unusual design.

It even presses well.

This is definitely one that will impress your friends, especially if they don’t know about Inklingo yet.

NEW TO INKLINGO?

If you’ve stumbled onto the blog and want to learn more about Inklingo, start here with the free shape collection and click on “Quick Start.”

Inklingo really is the quilting tool we’ve always wanted.

You probably need to see the main Inklingo Clamshell page on inklingo.com too.

We have more plans for Clamshells, but this should keep you busy for a little while!

Linda & Monkey

PS  If you search for Clamshell (top of the window), you can collect all of the Clamshell  messages in the blog archives on one page.

I enjoy the emails I receive about the Jane Austen Quilt. Today, my plan is to answer a few of the most common questions. What could be better than starting with a few photos?

I took this photo at Jane Austen’s House in Chawton in 2001. Since then, the quilt has been professionally cleaned. The quit is lighter and brighter without centuries of dust and dirt, and now it is beautifully displayed on a replica of Jane Austen’s bed.

I first saw the patchwork coverlet in Jane Austen’s bedroom at the house in Chawton before I was a quilter, and it has fascinated me ever since. It is the inspiration for five of my books: Quilted Diamonds, Quilted Diamonds 2, Jane Austen’s Writing Table Quilts, Jane Austen Patchwork (downloadable pattern), and Jane Austen Patchwork Mystery.

Jane Austen, Cassandra, and their mother sewed patchwork when they lived in Chawton. They used templates for English Paper Piecing. There was no preference for sizes which were easy to measure, because they weren’t measuring. 

As a result, the shape and size of the diamonds and sashing are tricky for modern quilters. The few patterns which appeared over the years simplified the numbers to avoid measuring in eighths and sixteenths of an inch, or cutting odd angles. That added another layer of confusion. There was no way to reconcile the sizes and angles in the various sources.

Since Inklingo eliminates the need for measuring (by printing the outline of the shapes on the wrong side of the fabric), I knew it was possible to prepare an absolutely accurate pattern to sew by machine or by hand. 

With the gracious permission and assistance of the Jane Austen Memorial Trust, we were able to determine the measurements of the original, so Jane Austen Patchwork Mystery and the Inklingo download are the first and only accurate patterns.

WHEN WAS IT MADE?

Almost every reference to the coverlet quotes a letter which Jane Austen wrote to Cassandra on Friday, 31 May, 1811, from Chawton:

(Yes, that’s how she spelled pieces. She liked freindship too.)

However, the letter may or may not refer to this coverlet. The difficulty of the dates is discussed in Jane Austen Patchwork Mystery. The problem is the date of the fabric panel used for the center medallion.

MEDALLION FABRIC

Quilters often ask me where they can get the fabric for the center medallion. 

The medallion in the original coverlet is an attractive printed panel. There have been a few attempts at manufacturing a reproduction of it.

If you can’t say anything good, don’t say anything at all. Moving on . . .

I started with a cotton drapery fabric and then selected the fabrics for the diamonds and the sashing from my stash and from a local quilt shop.

Some quilters have appliquéed baskets of flowers for a lovely medallion, and others have created their own artwork to print on fabric, the way Emma might have done. (Except that Emma probably would not finish hers!)

I also used the cotton drapery fabric for the border—instead of sewing 2500 small diamonds like the original!

I sewed this small version by machine, except for the inner border of diamonds.

NOT A QUILT AT ALL

No, it’s not a quilt! The “Jane Austen Quilt”  is only two layers (top and back; no batting or quilting), so it is a coverlet. You can be true to the original or make a quilt. What do you think Elizabeth Bennet would do?

There are photo galleries of Bath, Winchester, Chawton, and Hampshire under the Jane Austen tab on the web site, and you can see the books and sample pages at Shop > Jane Austen.

I hope this mysterious patchwork will make you curious to know about Elizabeth, Emma, Fanny, and the other heroines, and entice you into reading—or re-reading—Jane Austen’s brilliant stories.

Linda & Monkey

PS  We have written about Jane Austen on this blog before. You can collect the posts on one page by using the Search feature (up at the top).

Monkey and I hope you will like them.

There is a new Search feature (top right), so you can put away your Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass and find what you want.

Monkey loves it, but he’s keeping his magnifying glass too.

There are also new breadcrumbs (top left).

Ooops, no! Bread CRUMBS, not bread STICKS. Think Hansel and Gretel.

This would have been announced several weeks ago, except that there were programming issues when we tested the site in Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), which is used by about 15% of us (including me). Most quilters browse with IE8, Mozilla Firefox, or Safari. Yesterday, a genius programmer in HOT Brooklyn NY found an answer so the menus should be working properly for everyone. (She is a star.)

Big text is easier to read, but there is a trade-off, especially if you find yourself scrolling scrolling scrolling. You might want to try text that is a little smaller so you can see more at once. 

SCROLLING?

On my mother’s computer, I find it almost impossible to navigate because she has a small, old monitor and someone set the Text Size to humongous, so she has to scroll to the right to see the whole menu bar, the place to log in, etc. Horizontal scrolling is a pain. I hope this does not happen to you. We want the site to look pretty and be easy to get around.

I have poor eyesight. In Internet Explorer 7, I like  Page > Text Size > Medium.

If you want to change the text size, it’s easy. This site has good info no matter what browser you are using:  http://www.w3.org/WAI/changedesign

You can fiddle with text size without hurting anything. Go for it. 

You can’t see it, but Monkey and I also got some ”back-end” improvements for managing the database. This thrills me even more than an ice cream cone with soft chocolate ice cream. There’s no telling what makes people happy, eh? (Plus, these back-end improvements are calorie-free!)

The menu has a new structure too. Notice our attempt to make SUPPORT more enticing.

I hope you will visit the site, and let me know what you think. If you have suggestions, please let me know. We listen.

Despite my cable ISP (Cogeco.ca) being blacklisted by Yahoo and Rogers (and maybe Comcast), we are having a good day!

Linda & Monkey

PS  This blog has a search feature too (top right), so you can find what you want in past messages.

PPS  Many of the emails I have sent since last Thursday started bouncing back to me on Sunday as a result of an inappropriate blacklisting of thousands of Cogeco cable customers. If you were expecting a reply, please let me know. I have a workaround now.

A new Inklingo quilter asked a great question in the Yahoo group. It is easiest to answer with pictures, so I am replying on the blog instead of in an email. (Aren’t we lucky to be online?)

Julie asked whether she could use Jelly Roll strips (2.5 inches wide) to print Inklingo one-inch hexagons. 

The answer is YES. You can use Jelly Rolls for a Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt with one-inch hexagons.

PREPARING THE FABRIC STRIPS

Instead of throwing narrow strips of fabric in the washer, I recommend rinsing them in the sink. There are good reasons for washing first to remove the sizing.

1. Fabric often shrinks more in one direction than the other, and uneven shrinkage can ruin the appearance of the finished quilt.
2.  The sizing prevents a good bond between the fabric and the freezer paper, and you are more likely to get jams if the fabric separates from the freezer paper in the printer.
3. It removes dirt, pesticides, and other chemicals which are part of the manufacturing process.
4. You will notice if any of the dye bleeds in a way that would ruin your quilt.

I never print fabric that has not been rinsed or washed. It only takes a minute to swish in water, blot on a towel, and lay flat to dry. Finish drying with an iron, if necessary.

CUSTOM PAGE SIZES

We use custom page sizes with Inklingo to make efficient use of fabric. Several examples are provided in the Catalogue of Shapes in each shape collection. 

The page for one-inch hexagons looks like this:

Suggestions are listed for 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, and 15 hexagons, but there are always more options.

All Inkjet printers allow you to print custom page sizes, but they usually require a minimum width of 3 inches, so in this case, even though the fabric is 2.5 inches wide, you would cut the freezer paper 3 inches wide and center the fabric so it would cover the area where the hexagons will print.

FP is 3 x 13.75  

Fabric is 2.5 x 13.5

To print 5 hexagons at a time, you would cut the strips 2.5 x 13.5 inches, and iron to freezer paper cut 3 x 13.75 inches (above). For 4 hexagons at a time, you would cut the strips about 11 inches (top photo). (It is easier to print several short strips than fewer long ones, even if your printer will let you print 20 inches at a time.)

For 6 at a time, the freezer paper is cut about 16.25 inches long.

You can use the freezer paper over and over again.

Before Inklingo, I had no reason to print Custom Page Sizes, but it is simple. You just need to enter the numbers in the print dialog box. There is a step-by-step guide on the web site under the Support tab with tips for your very first time.

FREE CHAPTER WITH PRINTING TIPS

There are more photos in the free chapter of The Inklingo Handbook, especially the photos on pages H44-H47.

The first chapter is included with the free shape collection for LeMoyne Star.  You will find everything you need to know about printing on fabric.

Inklingo uses fabric more efficiently that traditional methods. For example, although most of us like to use a rotary cutter, there are also layouts for hexagons to be used with scissors, when it would save some fabric.

Inklingo is ideal for hexagons. It is the quilting tool we’ve always wanted because it simplifies the preparation and gives us more time to sew! 

You asked a great question, Julie. Thank you!

Linda & Monkey

PS  If you are looking for other topics, there is a Search button at the top of this blog.

NOTE  To read the captions, you will need to close the pets thingy:

 Close

This is our first time using Slide.com. It was pretty easy but I spent a lot of time trying to remove the pets thingy. Does anyone know how to do that? (At least the ad is about Pets and this is a message about Monkey. It could be worse.) Or can you recommend another slide program than works on a self-hosted WordPress blog? 

Rain is pouring down in Burlington right now. It is cosy inside, and good to think of sunshine and blue skies in Naples five winters ago. I hope you are enjoying good weather wherever you are.

Linda & Monkey

 PS  If you’re looking for something, try the Search box up at the top. You can find great stuff in the archives. 

PPS  To make this Inklingo-related, I’ll mention that Monkey is a hand piecing snob. If you have a basket on your bike, you can take your sewing along.

The new Inklingo Clamshell Edges shape collection announced yesterday has inspired Cathi in Toronto! She has already started a new quilt, and she is calling it Clams on the Half Shell. You can see her first block on the QuiltObsession blog, front and back, so you can see how beautifully it presses. (Be sure to click on her photos to see a larger view.)

The shapes were requested by Inklingoists who needed the partial Clamshells to finish the edges of their quilts, but the possibilities are endless, using these simple components with half Clamshells.

Here are just a few examples of the ways you can use these building blocks.

Whirlybird

What is happening to my eyes?

Square blocks made up of 4 half Clamshells create the optical illusion.

Who said it had to be symmetrical?

Double take!

Making a point with curves!

These designs are the result of a quick stroll along the shore. There is an ocean of variations floating around in my head! How about you? 

Monkey’s Thought for the Day  With the whole Clamshells, every edge is curved. With half Clamshells, the longest edge is straight and easy by machine, but the effect is curvaceous.

Don’t forget to check out Cathi’s blog. We can hardly wait to see what you do with these shapes!

Linda & Monkey

PS  Have you used the Search feature yet? You can find anything you want in the All About Inklingo archives. That’s straight. (Clamshells are curvy.)

It’s summertime in Burlington. The sun is hot, hot, hot—and so are Clamshells!

After the 3 and 3.5 inch Inklingo Clamshell shapes were introduced, some quilters wanted the shapes to finish the edges too.*

They’re not just for edges either. This one is half Clamshells.
Does it look tilted to you, or is it the sun in my eyes?

Same shapes, but alternate blocks are made with the mirror image of the half Clamshell. Neat, eh? Imagine the possibilities with more than two fabrics!

The quarter Clamshell shapes are for the corners of a Clamshell quilt—or another fun block design.

If you’re staying inside where it’s cool, you can rotary cut and use your sewing machine for these curves, when everything is printed on the fabric with Inklingo,

Monkey is ready for a day at the shore, with his sun hat and sewing kit. (Yes, that is a ceramic clamshell box.) This is a great portable project too. You can cut with scissors when you’re on the go, and then zone out with a running stitch. Sometimes we just need the gentle rhythm of working with our hands.

She sews clamshells
by the seashore.
The shells she sews
are surely clamshells.
So if she sews shells,
on the seashore,
I’m sure she sews
Clamshells.

I have never heard Monkey say that.

Linda & Monkey

PS Remember the Search feature at the top of the screen! You can find anything you want in the archives. We have written about Clamshells before, but not in poems.

*You asked for it. You got it. We told you we would move these shapes up the list if enough quilters requested them. Promise kept. It’s ready.