Just a little later than planned - the bird watching quilt

I really did mean to post over a week ago, but technical issues got in the way.  I know it sounds like the modern version of "the dog ate my homework", but I really did have tech problems! I sat down to download the required pictures and couldn't find the necessary cable.  The likely culprit in the disappearance was not home, then I forgot multiple times to interrogate the likely culprit when he was home.  I finally remembered to ask if he had seen it, he returned it, and the internet promptly went down. By the time that was resolved, I was busy in the garden trying to divide plants before the heat hit, then baking for the culprit's high school graduation party coming up this Saturday.

So now, without further babbling, here's what I said I would post over a week ago.

I have struggled with this quilt and I am still not sure I got it right. A customer came in to the shop where I work with a pretty quilt that used these soft bird panels and the floral.  On impulse decided to make one too. I bought the same fabrics and rushed to start...and couldn't remember the details.  That's OK, I thought I'd just use the general idea as a starting point and run with it.

I don't mind this picture at all, but I hated it on my wall in real life.  The floral wasn't popping as much as imagined, and the whole thing looked very dense and busy.  How about more floral in the borders?

I rather liked this, so I went ahead and finished piecing the center of the quilt. Then I looked at it and felt it looked too much like a checkerboard of birds.  I also couldn't decide what fabric I should use for an inner border before the floral.  Looking at this picture now, I think I could have just used the floral as the inner border.

However, I didn't see that then, and  I decided to extend the diagonal lines of green rectangles into the border to distract from the checkerboard effect.

This still looked very busy to me and adding a floral border just added to the crowded look so the floral border had to go.  In the end I just added a wide blue border to float the whole center on a blue background.

Now I need to decide how to quilt and bind it.  I still want more floral, so maybe I'll use it for the binding.  As for the quilting...I know what I don't want better than I know what I do want!  I do not want to trace those birds in free-motion quilting! An all-over loose swirl design might look good, but I'm going to have to overcome a mental block about quiting willy-nilly over those birds!  Also, I think I still want the borders to be distinct from the center somehow, while still floating the center.  My mind's eye really doesn't ask for much!

Sometime this week I will baste this and hope I have a plan by then.  Tonight, I'm going to step away from this one and play with sunflower fabric.  The kitchen table needs new placemats!