Tilkunviilaaja®

A few weeks ago, I came across a blog post where a quilter shared a finish. She mentioned being vaguely unhappy with it even though there wasn’t anything wrong with the blocks and the design. I’m pretty sure that most of us have experienced something similar. Looking at a quilty finish and thinking “this may be okay, but I am so done with this: never again”! Here are five of my around 640 quilting projects that I would not re-make. I’ve analysed the core reasons and shared my learnings. Spectrolite: Problems all along Many years ago, I enjoyed a fun sew-together Saturday with my quilting guild. One of us shared a clever sew-and-cut method for creating a quilt block. I’d seen a quilt that she had made and oh, it looked so good! I wanted to make something as nice as that one! Because I didn’t quite understand value contrast back then, many blocks had too much of it while others didn’t have enough. I used patterned fabrics which read darker than I thought. But the beginn...

Quilting fabric colours also follow fashion trends, though the changes aren’t as rapid as in the garment industry. And why wouldn't they? Like all new things, new fabrics are tempting, as we all know (too well)! In this post, I'll share my thoughts of fashionable colours in quilts, and at the end, I will give the promised tips related to the topic. Though many of us quilters follow the current quilting fabric trends, many choose to go against them and favour "old-fashioned" fabrics by choice. Some popular colour/pattern schemes include the so-called “Civil War” and “1930s” fabrics, and there are quilters who purchase vintage bedsheets to create lovely 1970s themed quilted items. For example, my quilty friend Soile created her Ursula quilt – which in this photo is still a surface – and used many Civil War reproduction fabrics whose colours and patterns were invented a long time ago: She also used other than those reproduction fabrics and achieved a perfect c...

This month’s look back doesn’t see very far because I’m sharing rather a recent finish, the Chartres quilt. I introduced it in this blog in October last year (in 2025) when I was still blogging in Finnish. I thought that you might like to see it and know a little bit more about it! Chartres is cute because almost all of its fabrics are super pretty! (Note to self: use your pretty fabrics; it’s worth it!) What's behind the name "Chartres"? You may want to know why I named this quilt Chartres. I did consider inventing a name that would have been related to the other quilt that inspired me. My friend Soile had sewn a gorgeous quilt called Erica, and it might have been nice for the name to give a nod towards it, but I just could not come up with anything. This quilt was nearly called Eeny Meeny, which would at least have had the same initial letter, but then I realised that the nine-patch blocks reminded me of cathedral windows. And a specific cathedral at that. ...

Developing a colour palette is important when creating a fabric pull for a block, and when that s ame block repeats across your quilt top. Also if you have defined a colour recipe for your block so that the quilt is built of those similarly coloured blocks. Let’s start with a quick look at the colour wheel. It can be a handy tool in your quilting process, for planning a colour palette – when you want your quilt to have a deliberate, well-thought-out colour scheme. The colour wheel works best for a quilt design if you add the interesting group of colours that isn’t part of the wheel: neutrals. Meaning, black, white, grey and brown in all values and shades. Three ways to use the colour wheel I will share three ways to build a palette using the colour wheel. There are plenty of others, of course! A harmonious palette For a harmonious palette, you will choose colours that sit next to each other on the colour wheel. For your block or quilt, you will then pick fabri...