Tilkunviilaaja®

Today’s post concentrates on brown colour in quilts. It may not be the most exciting colour, but it can be very useful! You will get a tip or two on what to watch out for and many examples of how to use brown fabrics in your quilts with success. Brown is a colour in its own right, even though it is not one of the colours of the rainbow. One can also think of it as a very dark orange. In the CMYK colour model, brown is created by mixing yellow, magenta, and black. I remember the carboard palettes of watercolours at school: one got brown by mixing red, yellow and blue. The result was usually an ugly brown. And the water used for cleaning the brush became rather an unattractive shade of brown after one had dipped the brush in it a couple of times. Wikipedia mentions that both European and US polls reveal that brown is the people’s least popular favourite colour. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown ) What to watch out for when using brown Too much brown may make the quilt ...

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...

Last autumn, I decided to make two different projects that would feature hundreds of 2,5-inch squares. The first one has already been quilted, and I should only label, trim, and bind it. In this post, I’ll tell you more about the second one. Both projects launched in September 2025. For this one, I made a test block of 16 squares and one half of the needed X block: That is how far this project progressed until the end of December. The first project was almost done and I needed to review the situation. I had quite a few 16-blocks left over: And I also wanted to make more, using a different design. The blocks in the other project always had four same-hued squares running from corner to corner. In the new project, I wanted the 16-patches to be more random. As soon as I had a few complete blocks done, I made a small composition on the floor – just to see how the blocks might look together: Soon, I had a few more blocks, and wanted to set up a “mini quilt” with the intended design....

Deciding on the colours to use for your quilt is sometimes difficult. The first step to colour confidence is to be fluent enough in a few basic colour-related terms. In this post, I share a few insights on words that we use when discussing colour. If they are new to you, this is a good starting point. And if you know the terms already, you may enjoy my examples! The five basic colour-related terms that are most important for a quilter to know are  Colour Saturation Value Contrast Achromatic colours. 1. Colour  Colour refers to the generic name: red, blue, yellow. This image shows a playful array of colours: I created the piece at a whim and turned it promptly into one side of a bag that I named “Rainbow Compass”. 2. Saturation Saturation means how intensive we see a colour: whether it is strong or bright, or subdued or soft. The blocks in the following image feature saturated colours: especially the purples are intense. 3. Value Value refers to how dark or light we see ...

When you finish a patchwork surface, it may feel overwhelming to come up with a suitable quilting pattern. How to quilt it so that it does credit to the patchwork? This post is for confident beginners and intermediate quilters who enjoy making small projects like quilted bags, zipper bags, or mini quilts, and who want practical ideas for quilting them. This post includes:  3 interesting tips before you start quilting 9 ways to quilt using only a straight stitch 6 patterns with spirals, arcs and curves 6 easy free-motion quilting patterns  Over the years, I’ve tried many different quilting patterns on bag and pouch surfaces. My go-to patterns are very easy and do not require free-motion quilting.  In this post, I’m sharing 21 easy and proven ways to quilt a patchwork surface, ranging from very simple straight-line quilting to more decorative free-motion patterns. These ideas work especially well for small projects. I’ll share photos of my actual works, so you can se...