Tilkunviilaaja®

Are you planning to make your first quilt – or perhaps dream of making one? Go for it, but please don’t make the three mistakes that I made! When I decided to sew my first proper-sized quilt in the mid-1990s, I made three big mistakes - but I was able to finish the quilt: Be smarter than I was and learn from my early experiences! Mistake 1: Cutting with scissors. In the mid-1990's, quilting became visible in the sewing magazines that I subscribed to. I fell in love with the modern, colourful look and decided to make a quilt for our new bedroom. But because I wasn’t sure if quilting was going to be a lasting thing for me, I also decided NOT to buy any special tools. They were expensive, and I already had the cost of fabric to consider. And anyway, what was the use of investing in tools that I might only use for one project? So, what did I end up doing? I’d selected a relatively quick pattern based on strips. Meaning, it would have been a quick make if I’d had pr...

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...

Today, I’ll share some of my “quilt thinking” and reflections on one of my earlier quilts. If you saw the post about my favourite quilts, you may remember the Early to Rise / Aamuvirkku quilt which I finished in 2015. I sewed it according to the free tutorial/pattern “Geese Migration” by Cynthia Brunz. I had four good reasons to be inspired by the tutorial/pattern: It gave me an opportunity to use scraps – though not extensively The pattern uses a neutral for background Even though the block repeats across the surface, the colours do not. I did not have to make many similar blocks (and indeed, all my blocks were different) The pattern uses a sew-and-flip method for making the flying geese block. Before this, I had only made them of two half-square triangles When I look at the  Early to Rise / Aamuvirkku quilt now, I immediately see that many of the flying geese blocks do not have enough value contrast: their colours blend into each other, and the block loses defini...

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 th...

When you've been blogging about quilts for as long as I have, some photographs stay with you long after the quilts themselves have moved on. Since November 2009, I've shared nearly two thousand blog posts and taken at least ten times as many photos of my quilts, scraps, quilted items, and my scrappy quilting process. This collection of most memorable quilt portraits is not a list of my best quilts. Instead, these are the five quilt photos that earn a special place in my memory. And then there's one photograph that doesn't feature a quilt, but a series of luggage tags that I make of scraps. I can’t tell why I like this photo so much! Consider it a bonus photo on my list. Here are the 5 quilt portraits and one surprise favourite photo of quilted items, and the stories behind them. 1 – “Heading North” on a pier For more than 20 years, my family has had a favourite holiday place – a rented cottage on a Finnish lake. Many summers, we’ve stayed there for a week or two, ...