Year 40 Quilt: Block 1

One month down, eleven to go! ​Here's the first block for my Year 40 quilt I started last month. I ended up choosing Kona Thistle as the background; it's as close to a cooler light grey without being grey as I could get, and I'm satisfied with it. I originally chose Petunia, but it pulled the very warm purples too close to pink, so I shifted cooler. I still wish there was a tone just a *smidge* lighter but still purple - like that color the sky is just before sunset on a bright hazy beach day, but hey. If I want ocean-horizon-an-hour-to-dusk colors, I may just have to wait till I live near the ocean again!

In my haste to get cutting, I accidentally started trimming purple prints in both convex and concave curves, so I think I'll just go ahead and make a companion quilt while I'm at it. And since that runs the risk of my being very over curved piecing by the time next fall rolls around, I also decided to forgo my usual extreme pinning habit and try glue basting... I love it! These two projects will go a lot faster now that I'm a glue basting devotee!

But I'm having some reservations on the layout... with just the one block to look at, I'm second guessing the scrappiness of my layout. Wondering if I should make the blocks more tonal with ones that are lighter, darker, cooler, warmer print combinations? But I'm also wondering if it won't be just fine once I have a bunch of them done and laid out together. Thoughts? Anyone want to weigh in in favor of stay-the-course vs. make-them-more-uniform-within-each-block?

~ Sarah

​Linking up with Let's Bee Social & Needle & Thread Thursday.