Finished: Swiftly Flew the Long-eared Herald quilt

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Happy Sunday! 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. Let me introduce a new quilt make: the Swiftly Flew the Long-eared Herald quilt:
This quilt got its inspiration from an image of the Positive Vibes quilt pattern by Charisma Horton. I did not use a pattern: instead, I figured out the blocks and measurements that I needed.

It took me around four weeks from the first test block to the finished quilt top. In other words, this was a quick (and fun) make – at least up until the top was finished.

I did start slowly, by making a test block, but after I’d sewn 25 of those X blocks, I got better and faster and in no time (it seems), I had the blocks done.

Here are my notes about the design phase of this quilt, in the post Finishing a scrappy quilt top quickly. Look it up if you’d like to know how I organised the blocks into a design that pleased my eye.

One image of the Swiftly Flew the Long-eared Herald quilt (Läksi jänis juoksemahan in Finnish) that shows the texture that proper quilting brings. My friend Soile from Töölön Tilkkupaja longarm-quilted this and I could not be happier with the results!

Husband, the quilt holder extraordinaire turned the Swiftly Flew the Long-eared Herald quilt this way and that, making sure that I got a photo to really show the quilting pattern, and this is the photo:
Perhaps you are wondering about the name of this quilt. I took inspiration from the one single-fabric block that I included in the top:
I felt that the name could not be obvious, so I ruled out anything with the word “bunny”. It’s been a while since I wrote down the name, so I don’t remember how exactly I arrived at Kalevala, the Finnish national saga, searching for something that related to rabbits or hares. And I found a line in Finnish, “Läksi jänis juoksemahan,” which is a Kalevala-style way of saying “The rabbit took off running”.

Because this blog is in English, all my creations get an English name as well. It took me a while to find the translation of the Finnish Kalevala line, but I did find it. The English version sounds significantly more poetic – but it has the same rhythm as the Finnish one.

So, the top was finished at the end of March. I of course waited for Soile’s longarm studio to open so that I could take the top to be quilted – but then it took me quite a while to get around to trimming, labeling, and binding this.

I picked several different fabrics for the binding, basing my colour choices on the nearby colours on the quilt top. The binding doesn’t match the top perfectly, but close enough is good enough.
In this photo, you can see that the left-hand corner area of the binding sort of echoes the nearby colours:
And this photo shows the variety of fabrics that I picked for the binding:
I’ve noticed (and mentioned before) that tired-looking outdoor furniture looks much better in photos than one might think. The above photo proves this perfectly.

The previous full-view photo showed off the quilting pattern, and this one shows off the colours in the Swiftly Flew the Long-eared Herald quilt:
I’m very happy with the rhythm and the colourful look of my Swiftly Flew the Long-eared Herald quilt. I’ll be offering this for our guild’s quilt show that will open in early August.

Quilt details for “Swiftly Flew the Long-eared Herald” / “Läksi jänis juoksemahan”

Pattern: Self-drafted based on inspiration from Charisma Horton’s Positive Vibes quilt
Block: X blocks and four-patches, set up diagonally
Size: Twin size, 176,5 cm x 223,5 cm (69,5” x 88”)
Quilting: longarm quilted by Soile Kivinen at Töölön Tilkkupaja
Quilting pattern: Apricot Moon’s Daisy Doodles pantograph
Backing: White polkadots on pale beige, a wideback quilting cotton
Binding: Self-made scrappy binding that coordinates with the nearby quilt colours. Cut 6 cm wide, folded in half before attaching.
Finished: June 2026
Quilt number: 97

If you want to follow my quilting endeavours – what I’m working on and what I’ve finished (and get some quilting tips, too), you can subscribe to my biweekly newsletter here: https://tilkunviilaaja.blogspot.com/p/subscribe-today.html

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