Table runner in progress…

So I am following this tutorial and am super-excited to discover this 9-patch quilt trickery. The tutorial calls for three fabrics and you make one type of square, cut it apart, mix it up in a way you like and repeat.

Well, I had four fabrics to work with: a red, a mostly white, and two different teals. Let's call them "tile teal" and "big flower teal." So I decided I would make two kinds of patches instead of one. Every patch would have the red and white. Half the patches would use "tile teal" and the other half would use "big flower teal." Since my table is longer, I ended up doing three 9-patch squares of each mix.

When I got to the part where you cut them apart and mix them up, my thought was to still keep the pieces with their original partners. But then I thought, what if I swapped two of the four pieces from the "tile teal" 9-patch with two from the "big flower teal" 9-patch? It was more complicated to mix the two teals but it opened up way more design options.

First try: rotated so teals are together in center as block.
Not crazy about the 2 small red squares that end up next to each other.

Second try: I do like the little reds in the middle and the diagonal blocks.

Final choice: Put the "big flower teal" blocks in the center since they
are so much more dominant than the "tile teal."

So where am I at? Well, I have the top all together. I have the batting cut out. I need to quilt. And I need to make and attach the binding. A pleasant afternoon of work but one I am saving for the weekend. By the end of the day I feel like I am apt to make mistakes with my tired brain and eyes!