Australis - New Beginnings Part 2

Some quilts have a strong will and a mind of their own!  Australis is such a quilt  it seems. 

Here it is so far. 

When I started this I really just wanted to make a happy block to celebrate Australia Day. 

When that block was posted on Instagram I thought to myself - well now what are you going to do with it?  Out came a few shot cottons, a few indigenous prints, a few modern prints, a bit of Gwen Marston inspiration and the quilt Australis  began.  I am sure that this quilt has a mind of its own. I am learning so much and I am happy to share the journey with you. You can read about the first stage in my blogpost New Beginnings 

So now we are up to the next row of the Australis medallion quilt. After the lovely round of colourful shot cotton half square triangles shown above I decided that a neutral tone on tone print round was needed to balance  the quilt before adding more colour.

Next I decided to make some simple log cabin blocks. I gave careful thought to fabric placement and decided that I would make sure that a shot cotton was placed along the left hand side of each block and also along the right hand side as shown in the following photos.  Keep on reading to find out why.

I made a whole bunch of these blocks so that I could play around with placement to find the perfect balance of colour.

I specifically placed the fabrics this way on the blocks so that when you place them around the quilt as shown below with the plain colours joining, you will end up creating the illusion of a "round" row of coloured rectangles. 

I also added rectangles to the ends of each group of 4 log cabin blocks as shown below

Finally I added the corner square to the top and bottom rows before adding them to complete that round of the  Australis Quilt . 

My thinking cap is on now for the next round . Stay tuned for the next instalment.

Thank you for stopping by. Life is busy and always full of surprises. I hope you are finding a moment or two for some time for yourself to recharge your batteries. We always put others first, but remember that you are also important. We have one life - make each day special.

Happy sewing , love Miriamx