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Quilted zipper bag called Zed

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Greetings from the Tilkunviilaaja studio, where I have produced the sixth quilted zipper bag of the year! The name of this zipper bag is Zed (or Zeta for the Finnish-speaking audience). This picture shows the pattern which inspired the name: Another inspiration for this name was the fact that even though I’ve made more than 360 zipper bags, not a single one so far has had a name beginning with Z. (This is small wonder because it is not a natively Finnish letter.) Zed is a product of my less orderly scrappy play. I found the other panel – the one with the shape that may remind one of the letter Z – from a scrap bag where I store orphan blocks and smaller, block-like beginnings, and turned a small pile of leftovers found on my cutting table into a sort-of-matching surface: If you read the recent post on my memorable quilt portraits, you may recognise the wooden pallet from the bonus photo. It provides an excellent background for bright-coloured quilted items! You may also noti...
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Splendid colour tips for quilters: Blue colour in quilts

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This is a modern quilting blog focused on patchwork, scrappy quilts, zipper pouches, quilted bags, colour theory, and practical quilting tutorials. 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 blue in quilts What to watch out for, and ways to use blue to effect in quilting Practical examples from my own quilts and quilted items Did you know that blue is the most common favourite colour for women AND men? You can take advantage of this fact if you are making quilted items to sell. Blue represents trust, safety, solidity, peacefulness and calm. Companies and banks often use blue as their brand colour, to create a sense of trustworthiness. You could also choose blue colour for a quilt that you want to give to a person you want to feel safe. Blue is a cool colour and it often seems to recede towards the ...
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How I turn a pile of scraps into an intentional-looking quilt surface

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This is a modern quilting blog focused on patchwork, scrappy quilts, zipper pouches, quilted bags, colour theory, and practical quilting tutorials. I share finished projects, design processes, tips, and lessons learned. Today’s post gives you three ideas for improvising with your scraps so that you will end up with an intentional-feeling quilt surface. Many people still associate the term “scrappy” with a result where anything goes. This is of course one way of approaching a pile of scraps that may have accumulated from a dozen projects or more. It is an easy way and can be relaxing. Because a quilt surface tends to benefit from a bit of order, structure, or rhythm, I’ve developed my own approaches to scrappy quilting. One is based on colours, another is based on shapes, and the third applies the “jelly roll race” or “quilt lasagne” method to scraps. Scrappy improv quilting – repeated shapes creating order This method is based on improv piecing square-in-a-box blocks. The proc...
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My most memorable quilt portraits (and the stories behind them)

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When you've been blogging about quilts for as long as I have, some photographs stay with you long after the quilts themselves have moved on. Since November 2009, I've shared nearly two thousand blog posts and taken at least ten times as many photos of my quilts, scraps, quilted items, and my scrappy quilting process. This collection of most memorable quilt portraits is not a list of my best quilts. Instead, these are the five quilt photos that earn a special place in my memory. And then there's one photograph that doesn't feature a quilt, but a series of luggage tags that I make of scraps. I can’t tell why I like this photo so much! Consider it a bonus photo on my list. Here are the 5 quilt portraits and one surprise favourite photo of quilted items, and the stories behind them. 1 – “Heading North” on a pier For more than 20 years, my family has had a favourite holiday place – a rented cottage on a Finnish lake. Many summers, we’ve stayed there for a week or two, ...
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