Australis -New Beginnings Part 3

 There is a real nip in the air today in Sydney. The autumnal tones of the Australis  quilt suit this weather to perfection. Welcome to Part 3 of this growing quilt series. Australis is now too big for me to photograph well, so get ready for a few giggles when you see the finished quilt top towards the end of this blogpost. Photographic perfection is not my forté. I tend to favour the "before the makeover" look. At least I am authentic.

Let's start by revisiting the Australis quilt in my previous posts. You can read about the creation of the quilt in the New Beginnings blogpost by clicking here  and the Australis - New Beginnings Part 2 blogpost by clicking here .

In my last blogpost the log cabin variation round had just been added.

I chose to next add another neutral 2 inch border to frame the log cabins. To upsize the scale of the next pattern round I decided to add a wonderful large scale flying geese round. I mixed up all the fabrics   and  used a Marti Mitchell ruler to cut  the flying geese triangles. There really is something easy and delightful about using a purpose built ruler when making a quilt.  The   corner squares were created by  putting 2 flying geese units together pointing away from each other. 

To make things easier for myself I cut out a whole stack of central and side triangle units and then mixed and matched them at my sewing machine. To ensure that the sides fitted perfectly I  added thin solid colour strips to the short edges of each side panel to frame the corner squares. 

Australis still needed to be balanced, so another neutral border was added but slightly wider this time  being 2 1/2 inch when finished.  To frame the quilt perfectly I decided that it needed a border of squares.  The square border consists of 2 rows of 2 inch finished squares. The first row is made from print fabrics  and the second row is made from  plain fabrics.

Ta Da!!!!   The Australis top is finished. Here it is complete with very fine "model hands." Thank you Evan and Cameron. Thank goodness I have a tall husband and son who both have  loads of patience and tolerance for my crazy crafting ways.

Australis is now patiently waiting to be professionally long-arm  quilted by my friend Jo-Ann Phillips of Quiltwise Quilting.

In the meantime I can play around with the elements of this quilt .

I like the idea of  large flying geese strips and log cabin elements framed in a contrasting colour.

It's always fun to play and free ourselves from the constraints of patterns. Blessed are the pattern breakers!

I hope you have been able to find some time for yourself to pause, reflect and create.

Happy sewing, love Miriamx