Tilkunviilaaja®

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, ...

Choosing only five quilts out of the nearly 100 that I’ve made was easier than one might think. In this post, I share the chosen top five and one bonus quilt. If you enjoy scrappy quilts and bold colour combinations, you may find ideas and encouragement for your own projects. All of these quilts are examples of how value contrast matters more than colour choices. What makes a quilt become a favourite? My favourite quilts have all evoked a specific feeling in me. Surprise, delight in discovery, satisfaction of applying a gained insight, accomplishment, joy, and pleasure. 1. Empress Ramandu – strange blocks turned into a surprisingly lovely quilt Empress Ramandu quilt is one of my favourites because it surprised me so pleasantly. When I was sewing the blocks for my quilt Empress Ramandu, I honestly began to worry about the result. The fabrics looked strange together, and I thought that I would have to use the eventual quilt as nothing more than a picnic quilt. At the same ti...

Welcome to my second quilt finish of the year! Today I’m sharing my brand new Curious quilt (Utelias in Finnish). It is a twin-size quilt sewn of two different blocks, and a project that I started in September 2025. I finished the quilt top in Febrary and shared the full start-to-finish piecing process earlier in my blog post about the 16-patch- and X-blocks in a quilt surface. In this post you’ll get: Proof that quilting makes the surface come to life Many pictures of this quilt Summary of quilt details for this Curious quilt.  It felt great to photograph this one on a sunny afternoon. My lovely husband is a seasoned quilt-holder and most of the images from the photo shoot came out great. This is the first test block – or block-and-a-half – that I made in September 2025. Can you spot the test block on the finished surface? Here’s a picture that I was going to use in the February post but did not: We had quite a bit of snow in January-February time this year, and su...

Greetings from the Tilkunviilaaja studio! May I introduce to you my first quilt finish of 2026: Serious quilt (Totinen in Finnish). She is basking in the wintry sunshine on the snow that is full of children’s footprints. We were doing the photoshoot on the top of a small hill where children come to go down it on their sleds. I saw a quilt like this in completely different colours and decided to make a version with a very dark background. My 16-blocks would also feature certain coloured squares from corner to corner. I knew that I would find enough fabrics for this quilt in my stash. These were the first blocks sewn, early in October 2025. At this point, I was very inspired! Indeed, I had no shortage of suitable fabrics for the squares: And yet, even with a sizeable stash, I could not help but buy an exciting mystery bag from the local quilt shop Tilkkunen. I happened to see that a limited number of such bags was available and I just could not help myself. This is what the bag looke...