It all started when I unwrapped my Christmas present from my friend and saw this beautiful fabric I’d been eyeing at ThreadBear, my local quilt store. I’m lucky enough to live in a small town where the owners of ThreadBear not only know me, but they know my taste in fabric. When my friend stopped by the store looking for a gift for me, she walked out with two one-yard cuts from Emma Jean Jansen’s Terra Australis collection AND a $50 gift certificate which I used to buy the coordinating fabrics from the collection. Check out my Sunday Stash #9 post if you’d like to see this beautiful collection before I cut into it.

I decided that I wanted to make a sampler quilt of 12-inch finished blocks using this collection with Kona Shadow as my background fabric. The first block I made was The Bee Hive’s Quatrefoil block. I made the block below as a practice block before I made my hive mate’s block in Blueberry Park fabrics blogged about in my Bee Blocks January 2016 post.

Terra Australis Quatrefoil Block

In late December/early January there was an onslaught of Block of the Month clubs that tempted me, and I definitely signed up for more than is possible for someone who works full-time. The upside is that I have numerous resources that I can draw on now and in the future. It was very freeing to figure out that I can pick and choose what will work best for me. With that perspective in mind, when I was scanning Bloglovin’ one morning in early January, I came across Amy Gibson’s free Sugar Block Club on her Stitchery Dickery Dock blog (which of course I immediately signed up for!) and fell in love with her January Modern Churn Dash block. Below is the second block I completed for my Terra Australis quilt.

Terra Australis Modern Churn Dash Block

By this time, I was starting to get a clearer picture of what I wanted for this quilt. I’m going to make 25 different blocks for my full-size bed and will try to make four blocks per month. Each block will have some kind of triangle in it, but I don’t think I will paper piece any of the blocks. I remembered that I really liked several of the blocks created for last summer’s 2015 Fabri-Quilt New Block Blog Hop and thought that  AnjaQuilt’s Floored block would be a perfect fit for my quilt. Here is my version of Anja’s lovely block:

Terra Australis Floored Block

On Pinterest I found several 12-inch blocks that I may make this year, and one particularly struck my fancy. It is from Quilter’s Cache and is called No Name #2 (such a lame name for such a beautiful block!!!) But here’s where I made a choice that I’m pretty sure I’m going to redo. Without really even thinking about it, I made the block below with a low-volume Terra Australis grey feather fabric I found on Etsy rather than the Kona Shadow background fabric. I really like how this block looks, but I think I need to remake it with Kona Shadow and perhaps make a pillow out of this block.

Terra Australis No Name #2 Block

I think I could use the low-volume feathers fabric as background for other blocks, so my Terra Australis quilt could have two background fabrics, but my gut feeling is that I will be happier with the clean aesthetic of Kona Shadow as background for all the blocks.

Feel free to weigh in. Do you think I should remake No Name #2 with Kona Shadow background and save the original block to use for a coordinating pillow for my Terra Australis quilt?
Linking up to Cooking Up Quilts’ Main Crush Monday, Blossom Heart Quilts’ Sew Cute Tuesday and Freshly Pieced: WIP Wednesday.