Tilkunviilaaja®

Developing a colour palette is important when creating a fabric pull for a block, and when that s ame block repeats across your quilt top. Also if you have defined a colour recipe for your block so that the quilt is built of those similarly coloured blocks. Let’s start with a quick look at the colour wheel. It can be a handy tool in your quilting process, for planning a colour palette – when you want your quilt to have a deliberate, well-thought-out colour scheme. The colour wheel works best for a quilt design if you add the interesting group of colours that isn’t part of the wheel: neutrals. Meaning, black, white, grey and brown in all values and shades. Three ways to use the colour wheel I will share three ways to build a palette using the colour wheel. There are plenty of others, of course! A harmonious palette For a harmonious palette, you will choose colours that sit next to each other on the colour wheel. For your block or quilt, you will then pick fabri...

I was going to analyse Lexical, the quilt that launched me as a pattern designer, but I ended up writing a post that isn’t really about the quilt itself. Instead, I found myself reflecting on my own journey. After all, only I can tell that story – anyone can analyse a quilt if they want to. Here’s my journey which led to publishing Lexical, my first commercial quilt pattern – and the journey did NOT begin with a thought “I’m going to become a quilt pattern designer”. Before Lexical, I already loved writing instructions I’d already published numerous quilt block tutorials on my blog and written tutorials and how-to articles for the Finnish quilting magazine. I had dreamed of putting together a book that would combine my quilt patterns with the stories behind the quilts. (Some ten years ago, I even had a professional designer create a couple of sample page layouts for me so that I could see how my book might look.) Back then, though, publishing something commercially was d...

A couple of days ago I came across a small piece that I’d sewn of half-square triangles. It was a small project to work on at our summer place where I only do hand-sewing – if I sew at all. I had the HSTs with me and sewed them together by hand. Nothing particularly exciting about that find, really. Until I happened to see a picture of “what was going on 10 years ago,” with that piece in it. I’d sewn it together a decade ago, thinking that it would become a quilted item – and it’s still in that same state. This got me thinking about how long things sometimes take in quilting. At least in my quilting. And because I have a lot of material in my blog, it didn’t take long to find examples to share with you. No progress in ten years Almost exactly ten years ago, in July 2016 I had hand-sewn the binding on my Heading North quilt and taken one of my most memorable quilt-finish photos of it. When I was sewing the flying geese blocks for that quilt, I got a whole bunch of bonus half-...

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. Today’s post is a little different because it isn’t about any specific colour. Instead, it discusses how you can use a single colour to effect in your quilt. One colour can be surprisingly versatile in quilting, and perhaps this post encourages you to experiment a little. I suggest three basic ways to discover the versatility of using just one colour in a quilting project:  Create a scrappy surface  Make single-coloured blocks Choose one colour and complement it with a neutral I’ve illustrated these three ways with examples of my quilts and quilted items. I also give an answer to the question: “Could the whole quilt be of one colour?” 1. Create a scrappy surface Using your fabric scraps is a low-threshold way to start exploring the idea of using just one colour in a quilt project. If you have a mishmash o...