Tour Jill Finley's Home

Jill Finley creates quilts for her business, Jillily Studio. She is renowned for her use of appliqué "the Jillily way."

Baskets that were a grocery store find met Jill's requirement of containers she could see through that weren't plastic.

A salvaged window that was once used for her daughter's wedding decor now finds new life as a display piece in the studio.

"Surface area is the biggest thing sewers need," Jill says. "There's never enough surface area, and it's the hardest thing to create. My design wall is a 4x8-foot piece of insulation board covered in batting."

Jill's office connects to her basement-level sewing studio. "Natural light in abundance was a requirement I had when designing this space," Jill says of the sewing studio.

Citrus Salad is a single-pattern quilt available from Jillily Studio. Jill displays it here on a chair in her guest room.

Buy this quilt pattern here.

This detail of Citrus Salad shows clearly that Jill loves appliqué. She uses Appli-Glue, an acid-free, water-soluble glue she developed, to "baste" pieces in place before stitching them in place by hand or machine.

A pinch of piecing and a dash of appliqué come together to make a well-dressed kitchen. The Cottage Bloom table runner and Cherry Lemonade tea towel are both from Jill's book Home Sweet Quilt (Martingale; 2012).

Buy this book here.

"I always make a project from the fabrics in a line that I think might be left over once the focus fabrics are gone," Jill says. Her Serenity quilt (a single-copy pattern) is one such example, using a few subtle blue and gray prints from Jill's Beyond the Gate fabric collection for Henry Glass & Co.

Buy this pattern here.

Jill folds her quilts and stores them in a painted cupboard when not in use.

Jill also designs smaller projects in addition to quilts. Her Fresh Baked orange roll pincushion and Fresh Squeezed orange and grapefruit pincushions are in Jill's book Stitched Together (Kansas City Star Books; 2010).

Buy this book here.

Jill's family members sometimes do Round Robins with rules such as "Round 3 must be applique" or "Round 4 must incorporate squares."