Since January, I have been working on a mystery quilt with my Chattanooga Quilter’s guild. Last Wednesday we were suppose to have all the blocks done and ready to arrange. We spent a lot of the meeting arranging my blocks on a design wall, then I brought it home rolled up in a flannel backed table cloth and transferred the layout to my regular design wall.
I have fiddled with it off and on for a couple days and think I may be about done, but I would love your input. Here are pictures of some variations — please leave comments and suggestions.
ONE:
This is just about the same as it was at the end of the meeting. One change I know that I made was to put a background square in that Ohio star center. It replaced a focus fabric square, and I think it made it seem to busy. I kind of like the negative space created by the background fabric, especially with all the movement in this layout.
TWO:
I think the only differences here are in the placement of some of the less noticeable block, the rail fence and nine patch blocks. I tried to get more cohesive groupings, but since I can’t quite tell the difference from picture #1, I guess it wasn’t very effective..
THREE:
It occurred to me that the aqua hour-glass blocks might just be too bright for the rest of the fabrics and not blend well. I happened to have a nice peachy batik and made some more hour-glass blocks and replaced some of the aqua blocks. I know, I know, one of the blocks is turned wrong in that star, but I fixed, it really. I don’t know if it shows here, but the background has a peachy tint in areas along with the greyish lavender and a bit of aqua.
FOUR:
Now all the aqua is gone and replaced with peach. I think I like this better, but would love your opinions too.
FIVE:
This is the last picture today. I added some more peach blocks down in the lower left corner and changed the friendship star also in that lower left corner. I am not sure about the new composition though. I like that the 1/2 square triangles seem to join with the three focus fabric blocks, but is it then too heavy for that corner?
Looking at it right now I am thinking of moving more of the rail fence blocks up to the top right corner to make a kind of frame like the peach blocks do on the left. I will try that tomorrow. Maybe they will balance the other corner more effectively.
I look forward to reading what you think.
Towanda 
I am thinking that the peach ones pop out too much, – personally, I preferred the aqua.
And I prefer the friendship star to the changed arrangement.
So I like pictures # 1 & 2 best, but when I look at the friendship star to the upper left, I am thinking that the triple rail dark edge in the vertical position may look better if it were horizontal, – then for cohesion, turn the ones above & to the right of it to the horizontal position also & see what you think.
I do have mine on the board, but I forgot to cut the background squares, so need to add some of them.
Dawn