Tilkunviilaaja®

There are quilters who avoid using many multicoloured, patterned fabrics together because combining them feels daunting. Many address this challenge by purchasing curated sets of multicoloured fabrics because the designer has already done the matching. However, combining a variety of fabrics from a variety of designers does not have to be a problem. In this splendid colour tips post, you will find my quilt thinking on the topic of multicoloured, patterned fabrics: what to watch out for when using many such fabrics together and how to use them successfully. What to watch out for when using multicoloured, patterned fabrics Your worst enemy is chaos – unless you are looking for a chaotic effect. My process when making the Goodwill Among Neighbours quilt is an example of how multicoloured patterned fabrics may not always want to play together just like that. I deliberately chose pretty strange combinations of fabrics to some of the blocks thinking that a simple, geometric block wil...

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”! Of my around 640 quilting projects, these are five 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 begi...

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...

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...