Finished: Community Garden – a scrappy, quilted wall textile

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 Quilt studio diary series, where I introduce my recently finished quilts and quilted items and share some thoughts about the process.

Today’s finished creation is Community Garden / Siirtolapuutarha, a square, scrappy, quilted wall textile that features beautiful Kaffe Fassett precuts:

Let’s go back in time to February, when I was still working on the quilt top. I shared photos of the whole process in my How it started – and how it’s going post back then.

The post closed with an image of the completed scrappy centre piece, which reminded me of Modest Mussorgsky’s piano suite “Pictures at an Exhibition,” which Emerson, Lake and Palmer adapted and recorded as well.

In that post, I also promised to update you on my idea for the surroundings for the centre piece “soon”. I could have done so because I finished the border almost right away. My idea was to create an ombré frame for the centre piece, starting from deep, dark blues from the lower left and transforming gradually to pastel blues on the upper right.

This is a quick shot of auditioning fabrics for the upper corner:

And here’s (most of) the final plan for the frame:

It took me two months though to publish the next update, in the What’s on my sewing table right now post. Why? Because I didn’t know how to continue from there. I folded the surface and put it away, and when I next looked at it, it was wrinkled, too:

At the end, I did not feel like adding anything to the surface. Because I don’t like to make big, square quilts, I would have had to grow the surface into a rectangular shape, which didn’t feel right. That’s why I eventually declared the top finished as it was and took it to Soile at Töölön Tilkkupaja to be quilted.

She quilted the scrappy centre and the ombré frame using different patterns, and the result looks stunning in the glorious spring afternoon – even though the piece hasn’t even been trimmed yet:

It took me a while to decide on binding, but I did what I tend to do when in doubt: I chose to create a scrappy binding that echoes the colours in the quilt. This time, the binding echoes the hues in the ombré frame:

I am extremely happy with the result! I could not wait for dry weather so I took the first picture inside where there was sunlight at least:

The Community Garden / Siirtolapuutarha wall hanging got its name when I presented it to my quilting guild friends in a recent Show and Tell session. We were in the middle of planning a small show on the theme “My Helsinki,” which made me think of a way to get this into the show.

There are many community gardens in Helsinki, so the name made this wall hanging appropriate for the theme. (However, it didn’t make it to the show because I got a cold and couldn’t bring it to the set-up.)

Remembering my earlier quilt photos, I took one that showed my woolen socks as well:

The backing is turquoise blue with flower patterns, which is in line with what’s going on in front:

I feel I must share two closeup photos of the Community Garden wall hanging. The first one shows the loops on the blue border/frame:

You can also see that the quilting pattern in the centrepiece is different. I love the effect!

In addition, Soile matched the quilting thread to the changing blues of the frame/border. Because I don’t like the look of dark thread on a light background, she used a lighter thread colour on the lighter parts of the frame/border. I love that as well!

The Community Garden / Siirtolapuutarha wall hanging is my 31st such piece since I started blogging in November 2009. Its size is 106 cm x 106 cm (around 42” square).

Quilt details for Community Garden / Siirtolapuutarha wall hanging

Pattern: Self-drafted in an improvisational way
Size: 106 cm x 106 cm (around 42” square)
Quilting: custom longarm quilted by Soile Kivinen at Töölön Tilkkupaja
Backing: Turquoise-blue flower-patterned single-fabric
Binding: 6 cm wide, self-made scrappy bias binding in dark to light blues, folded in half before attaching
Finished: May 2026
Quilted wall hanging number: 31