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37 pieces of quilting advice in exactly three words each

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A while ago, I shared a collection of three-word pieces of quilting advice as a carousel post in Instagram. It was fun to think about quilting from that perspective for a change, considering everything that I feel is important – and condensing each thought into just three words. Below you see the original post. Note the bonus piece of advice, originally from Angela Walters, the Midnight Quilter: it is so good that it deserved to be included – though it is six words long. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Tilkunviilaaja (@tilkunviilaaja) Fellow quilters responded to the post and suggested more pieces of advice. From those suggestions, I picked four more that I felt weren’t properly represented in my original list: Here is the full list of all 37 pieces of advice, all in exactly three words: Use your stash. Pick gadgets carefully. Invest in quality. Avoid bias edges. Avoid strict plans. Write things down. Never fudge seams....
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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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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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