Tilkunviilaaja®

Today’s splendid tips topic isn’t just one colour, but all the colours – and all at once. In this post, you will see – again – what matters more for your quilt than colour choices do. You will also get seven tips that help you use a multitude of (or all) colours in your quilt while avoiding a chaotic look. What to watch out for when using many colours? My instant reaction to this question is: “nothing!” Though to be honest, there really are a few things to watch out for. If you make a wild, improvisational, unplanned and multicoloured quilt surface, its viewer may not easily find anything there to focus on. If you put such a quilt on show, most of the audience would be likely to move quickly past it to see the next quilt. Even so, a riotously colourful quilt may be fantastic and lovable as an item meant to be used! For example, the overall rhythm of my Spectrolite quilt is inconsistent because some blocks have a really harsh value contrasts whereas others have very little co...

I wonder how many want to read tips about using ugly colours and fabrics in quilting. But oh well, perhaps you are here because you are curious. If you are here. An ugly colour is any colour that you don’t like. The reason may be anything, really. I don’t like mustard yellow because it reminds me so much of the 1970s classrooms, rife with the odour of sweat. And there is a particular green that I find exceptionally ugly. Though my principle is to use fabrics that please me, I did challenge myself once in 2020 to sew something using mustard-yellow fabric. The result: Catlandia / Kissalandia quilted zipper pouch: What to watch out for when using ugly colours and fabrics? Though you may feel that you need to use the ugly-coloured or otherwise unpleasant-looking fabrics in your stash – or feel that you have to challenge yourself like that – don’t overdo it. It’s so much more fun to handle attractive, likeable fabrics. Why force yourself spend time with colours that you don’t much li...

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...