Tilkunviilaaja®

This Quilt studio diary post is about something that I’ve learned to appreciate: starting a quilting project slowly. Especially when I’m developing my own measurements for a quilt that I’ve seen in a picture, a thoughtful beginning can help me later on. Ever since I started to make quilts, I’ve drawn inspiration from the beautiful works of other people. I’ve always liked to look at a picture and then figure out the block or blocks that are needed, measurements and all. I’ve only ever bought a handful of patterns – probably fewer than I’ve created myself. My latest project has been inspired by Charisma Horton’s quilt “Positive Vibes”. Rather than using her pattern itself, I explored the design on my own and figured out measurements that looked good to me. Designing my own version I liked what I saw as a combination of X blocks and four-patch-in-a-square blocks. Because I’ve had experience in creating an X block, I wanted to figure out my own pattern and measurements. These were...

My quilts do not feature a lot of yellow, but I often take advantage of its eye-catching character. Today’s colour tips for quilting center around yellow: what to watch out for and how to use yellow successfully in your quilts. Yellow is often associated with youth, hope, and joy. It is an optimistic, energetic colour and it is often used to draw attention to something. What to watch out for when using yellow? Many quilters consider yellow a difficult colour, and this is probably because yellow is such an intensive colour for the human eye. And at the same time, even the most saturated yellows look surprisingly close to white in value to the human eye. As a result, any yellows tend to blend into the white areas placed next to them, so it is difficult to achieve a good value contrast between yellow and white. Even so, yellow is not automatically the lightest-value fabric in the surface. For a long time, I did not understand this and thought that any yellow would be a “light”...

In an earlier post I confessed that I rarely plan my quilts very much. But that does not mean there is no design process at all. Over the years I have used two very different ways to design a quilt surface. Traditional quilt design For the longest time, I thought that this was the only possible process for designing and sewing a quilt: 1. Choose a block design, perhaps two different ones 2. Choose the colours (and fabrics) for the block/blocks, which will all be similar. Note that this usually meant an expensive trip to the fabric store. 3. Cut all the pieces for the blocks 4. Sew the blocks, organise the blocks into a surface according to your plan or pattern and sew them together. 5. Design done, quilt top done. Somehow, this felt rather demanding, but I still believed that this was the way quilts were supposed to be designed. And that’s how I sewed my first quilt, a twin-sized quilt for our newly renovated bedroom. Because we had done a bit of interior decorat...

Today’s post concentrates on brown colour in quilts. It may not be the most exciting colour, but it can be very useful! You will get a tip or two on what to watch out for and many examples of how to use brown fabrics in your quilts with success. Brown is a colour in its own right, even though it is not one of the colours of the rainbow. One can also think of it as a very dark orange. In the CMYK colour model, brown is created by mixing yellow, magenta, and black. I remember the carboard palettes of watercolours at school: one got brown by mixing red, yellow and blue. The result was usually an ugly brown. And the water used for cleaning the brush became rather an unattractive shade of brown after one had dipped the brush in it a couple of times. Wikipedia mentions that both European and US polls reveal that brown is the people’s least popular favourite colour. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown ) What to watch out for when using brown Too much brown may make the quilt ...

Greetings from the Tilkunviilaaja studio! May I introduce to you my first quilt finish of 2026: Serious quilt (Totinen in Finnish). She is basking in the wintry sunshine on the snow that is full of children’s footprints. We were doing the photoshoot on the top of a small hill where children come to go down it on their sleds. I saw a quilt like this in completely different colours and decided to make a version with a very dark background. My 16-blocks would also feature certain coloured squares from corner to corner. I knew that I would find enough fabrics for this quilt in my stash. These were the first blocks sewn, early in October 2025. At this point, I was very inspired! Indeed, I had no shortage of suitable fabrics for the squares: And yet, even with a sizeable stash, I could not help but buy an exciting mystery bag from the local quilt shop Tilkkunen. I happened to see that a limited number of such bags was available and I just could not help myself. This is what the bag looke...