Tilkunviilaaja®

It’s time again to share some treasures from my quilty archives with you. Today, I will look back to 2012 when I created a quilted wall textile for my husband for his birthday. He plays the guitar and loves the Finnish custom-made Versoul guitars by Kari Nieminen. In other words, I made my husband a guitar: The official name of this quilted piece is Pasi’s Versoul Henry Gold Leaf Custom. The guitar picture on it is based on a photo that I found back then on the Versoul website. I didn’t want to infringe on Kari Nieminen’s copyright for the photo, so before I even started, I requested and got the permission to use the photo for this purpose. The making of this wall textile I took a screenshot of the picture and pixelated it into as many pixels as I had calculated I could manage when each pixel would be represented by an approximately 2” x 2” fabric square. Then I printed out the pixelated image. Luckily for me, this was an easy picture: black for the background and a variety ...

A square is a great shape in quilts. I’m may seem to be stating something obvious because the majority of quilt blocks are square, but this is not the single reason for the square’s greatness. Squares and other straight-edged shapes are easy to handle. In contrast, sewing a flat surface out of curvy shapes is difficult, and thus a great way to show off your sewing skill. One will never be admired for one’s ability to sew squares together! Because quilting is not a competition sport for me, I don’t mind taking things easy. One of the things I love about squares is that when you sew a piece, press and trim it into an exact square, it will be easy to sew together with a similar one and create a flat surface. It takes a bit more time and accurate trimming, but no elite expertise. Just look at these un-pressed, un-trimmed nine-patch pieces and imagine how hard it would be to sew them together like they are here, and avoid the seams turning willy-nilly! Same-sized squares are inter...

I wonder how many want to read tips about using ugly colours and fabrics in quilting. But oh well, perhaps you are here because you are curious. If you are here. An ugly colour is any colour that you don’t like. The reason may be anything, really. I don’t like mustard yellow because it reminds me so much of the 1970s classrooms, rife with the odour of sweat. And there is a particular green that I find exceptionally ugly. Though my principle is to use fabrics that please me, I did challenge myself once in 2020 to sew something using mustard-yellow fabric. The result: Catlandia / Kissalandia quilted zipper pouch: What to watch out for when using ugly colours and fabrics? Though you may feel that you need to use the ugly-coloured or otherwise unpleasant-looking fabrics in your stash – or feel that you have to challenge yourself like that – don’t overdo it. It’s so much more fun to handle attractive, likeable fabrics. Why force yourself spend time with colours that you don’t much li...

This quilt project saw its first public appearance in June, when I shared what was on my sewing table just then. It’s fascinating that I’d written this when I only had ten blocks ready: “My vision is to sew the nine-patch blocks together somewhat at random – only creating pools of colour that flow across the quilt surface.” – When you see the picture of the finished quilt top, you can see if I achieved that vision! In my July greetings from the sewing table, I was completely taken by this project. This is what I said: “I've been working my way through my many containers of leftover fabric pieces (they hold resource pieces, not scraps) and pulling out everything that's large enough to yield at least one 2" square. Quite often I find pieces large enough for me to cut three squares but not four. Why is that? It’s so inconvenient because I need two sets of four squares for each block.” In that post, I described the process of making these blocks and shared several p...