Tour Jill Finley's Home

May 21, 2014
From an in-home studio just steps from their family room, designer Jill Finley of Jillily Studio creates works of heart.
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Meet Jill

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

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Simple Storage

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

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Creative Display

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

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Easy Design Wall

"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."

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Sunny Sewing Room

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.

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Citrus Salad

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.

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Citrus Salad Detail

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.

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Kitchen Quilts

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.

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Subtle Palette

"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.

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Quilt Hideaway

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

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Small Stitches

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.

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Round Robin Rules

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

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