Tilkunviilaaja®

Welcome to my quilt studio! Today, I’ll share two quilting projects that I’ve recently been working on in my sewing space. Project 1: X blocks into a quilt top First, here are almost all the X blocks that I needed for my latest quilt project. See the clips that hold them together? I got a box full of number and letter clips from my friend Soile for my birthday, to use for tagging blocks. There is one of each number from zero to ten, and then alphabets. That’s why I had to be a little creative when using the clips to mark how many blocks there were in each stack. L3 is obviously 13. That was easy enough, but when I’d made all the blocks I needed, I really had to stretch my creativity! Z0 = ten; LT = eleven; I4 = 14, and the upside down J together with 5 make fifteen. I got the idea for these blocks when sewing different X blocks for the “Swiftly Flew the Long-eared Herald” quilt. It took me a couple of tries to get the measurements right (I can see this from the pho...

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. I share finished projects, design processes, tips, and lessons learned. Today’s post gives you three ideas for improvising with your scraps so that you will end up with an intentional-feeling quilt surface. Many people still associate the term “scrappy” with a result where anything goes. This is of course one way of approaching a pile of scraps that may have accumulated from a dozen projects or more. It is an easy way and can be relaxing. Because a quilt surface tends to benefit from a bit of order, structure, or rhythm, I’ve developed my own approaches to scrappy quilting. One is based on colours, another is based on shapes, and the third applies the “jelly roll race” or “quilt lasagne” method to scraps. Scrappy improv quilting – repeated shapes creating order This method is based on improv piecing square-in-a-box blocks. The proc...

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 ...