Quilt Diamonds Flimsy

I spent most of the first weekend in July wrestling with the quilt.  Wow, I would not have thought I would have so much trouble on the center diamonds.  I started with scrappy blues, blacks, greens and orange.  I abandoned the scrappy look to make the outer edge diamonds with navy blue sides with orange-gold centers.  I tried grey diamonds in the middle - way too much contrast and it looked washed out.  Then taupe, which really dulled the color of the whole quilt (very surprising because it matched nicely with two of the zig-zags).  Then a minty green similar to the zig-zags.  That looked great in small quantities, but as soon as I finished the four diamonds and placed them on the wall, they completely overpowered the quilt.  Damn.

I cut, pieced and ripped apart most of three sets of middle diamonds before I settled on a slightly lighter green.

Although it created a cooler temperature quilt, everything stopped fighting each other.  I had really wanted to work in the orange gold that had been in the original color palette, but every time I put some in, it seemed to jump off the quilt:  Look at me!!

The photo doesn't to it justice.  It's been dark and rainy - this will look a lot better when I get a chance to photograph in sunlight.

Now onto the backing.  I have a bunch of random diamonds to work in!  I'm trying not to make it really dark, but I have chunks of adorable navy blue print with trucks and planes and bulldozers in it.  I need to add that to the backing somewhere.  Also some of the dark gold that didn't go on the front.  Then maybe that large chunk of grey that came from my first failed middle diamonds.  We'll see how that looks!

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