Tilkunviilaaja®

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...

This post is one of my Splendid colour tips series, where I share information to help you choose fabrics and colours for your quilts with more confidence. In this post, I’ll share: My thoughts and helpful tips about using white in quilts What to watch out for, and ways to use white to effect in quilting Practical examples from my own quilts and quilted items White is categorised as an achromatic colour together with black and grey. They are void of colour, and we quilters usually call them “neutrals”. Western cultures associate white with purity, innocence, and peace – but in Italy, white is the colour for funerals. In Eastern cultures, white can mean death, grief, or misfortune. Though our associations with white can be mixed, it is still an extremely common neutral to use in quilts. Modern quilts, in particular, may have a lot of white space. What to watch out for when using white in quilts White areas in your quilt may sometimes be less than opaque. Then, if you c...

Today, it’s time again to share some of my “quilt thinking” and reflections on one of my earlier quilts, and today’s quilt is Gone with the Wind / Tuulen viemää from 2013. When I look at Gone with the Wind now, I notice immediately that quite a few blocks repeat the same fabrics. My present-day me would probably pick more fabric variety! A larger selection of fabrics might make the quilt even more interesting to the eye, and in that sense, the quilt might be “better”. But I’m very happy with the choices that I made back then. Though I was inspired by a quilt image, I figured out the actual block measurements myself because I was still working with a centimeter ruler! I never even tested the original tutorial by Coriander Quilts, so I don’t know if there is a big difference between my measurements and theirs. Though I always wanted quick progress back then, but I still took the time to make t est blocks. I made four versions before I was happy with the proportions. These were t...

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...