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Holiday Mood quilted zipper bag – and friends

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One more finish to share in my quilt studio diary! Here is my most recent finish, the Holiday Mood / Lomatunnelma quilted zipper bag. The name doesn’t refer to my feelings by the way: the zipper pouch just reminds me of holiday moods. Here it poses on a different garden chair than my usual choices: You may remember that the previous post on the Little Black zipper pouch showed the ancient but picturesque garden bench. This chair is of a later vintage but thanks to spending most of its life outdoors, it had lost almost all its colour. Because it had not aged as gracefully as that bench, I decided to refinish it this spring, and now it looks almost as good as new. To keep better track of my quilt bag photos, I always name one side of the zipper bag as “the other side,” which means that the other side is the representative side. Usually both sides do please my eye rather equally, though. This is “the other side” of Holiday Mood: The above picture shows the underside of the hex...
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Finished: Little Black quilted zipper bag

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Today, my quilt studio diary entry concentrates on a recent zipper bag finish. I gave it a Finnish name first, “Pikkumusta,” which translates directly into “Little Black”. But you may not know that the Finnish word means a little black dress, not anything else that might be black – we just save one word. So, here’s the Little Black quilted zipper bag, basking in the sun. Do you think that cat near the lower edge has closed her eyes because of the sunshine? One in-progress photo first. I took a picture of the zipper bag panels after I’d quilted but not yet trimmed them. And you know what: I didn’t remember to photograph the trimmed pieces! Both panels conveniently featured a scrap showing a round shape (they are really Christmas tree baubles), which inspired me to run a spiral of stitches on the surfaces. It is my second favourite way to quilt zipper bags. By the way, I’ve shared my 21 easy quilting patterns that I choose from when quilting small patchwork surfaces such as z...
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Apparently, a quilt top of 9-patch blocks can be quite attractive

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This quilt project saw its first public appearance in June, when I shared what was on my sewing table just then. It’s fascinating that I’d written this when I only had ten blocks ready: “My vision is to sew the nine-patch blocks together somewhat at random – only creating pools of colour that flow across the quilt surface.” – When you see the picture of the finished quilt top, you can see if I achieved that vision! In my July greetings from the sewing table, I was completely taken by this project. This is what I said: “I've been working my way through my many containers of leftover fabric pieces (they hold resource pieces, not scraps) and pulling out everything that's large enough to yield at least one 2" square. Quite often I find pieces large enough for me to cut three squares but not four. Why is that? It’s so inconvenient because I need two sets of four squares for each block.” In that post, I described the process of making these blocks and shared several p...
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Finished Anecdote quilted zipper bag

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In an earlier post about my three ongoing quilting projects, I already showed one set of zipper bag panels after quilting and trimming. I also mentioned that I’d finished the bag but not taken photos yet because the weather was so bad. In case you don’t remember, this is how the panels looked: On the very next day, the weather was favourable again and I was able to take the finished zipper bag to our garden to find suitable places for it to pose in. One of the places this time was a concrete slab which may or may not have supported a flagpole some time in the past. That day, the concrete slab only needed to support something pretty light: my quilted zipper bag called Anecdote / Tositarina: Next, I picked up the bag and moved it about half a yard to the left, to pose on a stone step. Do you think that the owls on this side are surprised to see all that moss growing on the steps? When I looked at this photo, I had to go back to the picture of the quilted and trimmed pieces - I ...
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Splendid colour tips for quilters: Using white in quilts

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This post is one of my Splendid colour tips series, where I share information to help you choose fabrics and colours for your quilts with more confidence. In this post, I’ll share: My thoughts and helpful tips about using white in quilts What to watch out for, and ways to use white to effect in quilting Practical examples from my own quilts and quilted items White is categorised as an achromatic colour together with black and grey. They are void of colour, and we quilters usually call them “neutrals”. Western cultures associate white with purity, innocence, and peace – but in Italy, white is the colour for funerals. In Eastern cultures, white can mean death, grief, or misfortune. Though our associations with white can be mixed, it is still an extremely common neutral to use in quilts. Modern quilts, in particular, may have a lot of white space. What to watch out for when using white in quilts White areas in your quilt may sometimes be less than opaque. Then, if you c...
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