Tilkunviilaaja®

Hello hello! Welcome to have a peek in my sewing studio! Lately, I’ve been busy sewing patchwork surfaces into quilted zipper bags, and this post introduces the first of those finishes. I’ve called it Legato, which is a music term meaning “tied together” – that the notes are to be played or sung smoothly without a silence between one note and another. I used to play the piano in my childhood and youth, so the notation and the term became familiar to me. Legato felt like the right name choice because of the way the petals of the coneflower blend into the neighbouring reds in this surface. The other side of the Legato quilted zipper bag is constructed in a similar way – around a focal fabric piece – but the orientation is horizontal: Both surfaces are a rarity for me because I built them using the quilt-as-you-go method. The surface ends up looking as if it has not been quilted though it has, and I’m not sure how I feel about the look. In some earlier projects, I have added qu...

I’ve shared many tips and how-tos lately because I love to be helpful. I hope that you readers have found my posts helpful! Today, though, I’m going to share the quilting projects that I’m working on in my sewing space. If you tend to have several projects in progress, you’ll be able to relate to this studio diary post. Here’s what’s currently on my table (and slightly off it): Unfinished quilt projects Two – no, three! – quilt projects are waiting to be completed. The first one is my flimsy that combines Xs and four-patches-in-squares. It's waiting to be taken to long-arm quilting. After I took its sunny pictures earlier this month, I folded it and set it down on a sofa. Now I see that it’s accidentally been taken in with two folded quilts, turning them into a sort of pillow. It will have to be re-pressed after this treatment! The second unfinished project is the one with Kaffe Fassett squares surrounded with a lot of scrappiness. I've shared the beginning of th...

In my previous studio diary post, my scrappy quilt top was starting very slowly. Then it happened: after the first, slowest-to-make blocks were done, the rest of the quilt came together in just a few days. The four-patches in squares were particularly fast to sew. I’ve noticed that after the first 25 blocks, the process usually becomes much smoother. There are fewer mistakes in cutting and trimming, for example. This is very noticeable in my way of working – I cut pieces for a few blocks at a time, not everything at once. With all the blocks done, the only thing left was to design them into an orderly layout and sew them into a quilt top. This time it was not easy to identify dark, mid-value and light blocks because almost all of them were mid-value. They also had the white corners in common (except for the bunny block). Well, I ended up identifying the very darkest ones and the lightest ones and decided to organise the rest by colour somehow. I did think carefully about the ...

This Quilt studio diary post is about something that I’ve learned to appreciate: starting a quilting project slowly. Especially when I’m developing my own measurements for a quilt that I’ve seen in a picture, a thoughtful beginning can help me later on. Ever since I started to make quilts, I’ve drawn inspiration from the beautiful works of other people. I’ve always liked to look at a picture and then figure out the block or blocks that are needed, measurements and all. I’ve only ever bought a handful of patterns – probably fewer than I’ve created myself. My latest project has been inspired by Charisma Horton’s quilt “Positive Vibes”. Rather than using her pattern itself, I explored the design on my own and figured out measurements that looked good to me. Designing my own version I liked what I saw as a combination of X blocks and four-patch-in-a-square blocks. Because I’ve had experience in creating an X block, I wanted to figure out my own pattern and measurements. These were...

In an earlier post I confessed that I rarely plan my quilts very much. But that does not mean there is no design process at all. Over the years I have used two very different ways to design a quilt surface. Traditional quilt design For the longest time, I thought that this was the only possible process for designing and sewing a quilt: 1. Choose a block design, perhaps two different ones 2. Choose the colours (and fabrics) for the block/blocks, which will all be similar. Note that this usually meant an expensive trip to the fabric store. 3. Cut all the pieces for the blocks 4. Sew the blocks, organise the blocks into a surface according to your plan or pattern and sew them together. 5. Design done, quilt top done. Somehow, this felt rather demanding, but I still believed that this was the way quilts were supposed to be designed. And that’s how I sewed my first quilt, a twin-sized quilt for our newly renovated bedroom. Because we had done a bit of interior decorat...

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...