New York Beauty

This is a design layout I thought I might do with my NYB blocks. I had made 12 blocks up to this point. I have this beautiful Asian fabric that I thought I might put in the center, with the NYB blocks surrounding it. A couple of the ladies in the class were doing this layout. They did buy their Asian fabric first, then built their colors around that fabric for their NYB blocks. I picked the purple and turquoise first, then thought of the Asian fabric later. Wanda suggested, and I agreed, that the blue in the Asian fabric was too grayed to go with the turquoise. So I dropped the Asian fabric as a center medallion idea. I decided to make four more NYB blocks for the center medallion, as in the sample for the class. Below is a picture of the layout that was shown in the sample for the class. I like this layout, but just was whiney and did not want to make four more blocks. They were paper pieced, and were a bugger for me to do since I am not very good at paper piecing. But, I persevered and made the other four blocks. I discovered that it was easier to take the paper off and then sew the rays to the arcs without paper. In class, the teacher had us use the paper throughout, but I fought it every stitch. When I made these last four blocks, I took the paper off after I sewed the rays, and then it was a piece of cake to sew them to the curved pieces! Well, almost a piece of cake. I did not check the paper pattern before I cut out my inner and outer curved pieces. One edge of the outer piece was wider than the other edge. I am finding this out as I am trying to piece them all together! Silly me for not checking the pattern before cutting! The center four blocks are sewn together. The others are just stuck to my design wall. I am thinking of putting a 2 inch border around the center medallion, as in the sample to make the center float more. In the sample, there was a 2 inch outer border going around what you see in this picture. My borders will be in the turquoise fabric. I think I have enough to do that. Then there was another yellow border around that, then another 3-4 inch black border around everything to finish it. The sample was in yellow and black, very dramatic. I do not have enough of my turquoise fabric to do the last outside border, I guess I could use some purple (I have lots of that), but I do not have anymore of the purple paisley fabric that I used as the inside curved piece. What do you think?

I really like this pattern, and I am eager to finish it.

Happy Quilting

P.S. It seems that I have paragraphs back again, sort of. Thank you to all who replied to my *Confused Questions*. I was having a mental moment and needed some feedback.