Lemonade in the Making

Babs wanted swappers to use her focus and any fabric that was just the colors from the focus to build any block they wanted.  She got back a few like that but mostly they were blocks with lots of neutral background and not much color.  At least they all used her focus!

She brought them over (was it more than a year ago now Babs?) one day when our group was meeting.  She fiddled around with them and just got less and less happy with them until eventually she pitched them towards the trash (at least figuratively).  I rescued them; she gave me the "you can't make anything out of that mess!" look.  They sat on a shelf gathering dust and feeling sorry for themselves until 3 days ago when I rediscovered them.

I laid them out on the kitchen floor, my "design wall" (That's why I never play along with design wall monday - I NEVER leave things on the design wall.  People might step on them!).  I did lots of leaning over and shuffling blocks.  Babs was right, these were really difficult blocks to balance. 

Evenutally I hit upon the idea of framing each block in a color that wasn't in the block which upped the odds that I'd be able to lay them out without having blobs of color coagulating in different corners.  Here's the top nearly finished. 

I don't have any of her focus fabric, but I do have a very similar green with tiny white polka dots.  I'm thinking green border as wide as the frames (one inch) followed by one inch of the neutral followed by a 2 inch color block border made from the framing fabrics and the green and then bind it all in the too dark purple that is seen in a couple of the blocks (hopefully fooling the eye into believing that the dark purple is there on purpose).

Suggestions?