Three string samples

I know you can't go wrong with strings, but I've had a little challenge getting this one off the ground!

Yesterday I rough-pieced several string blocks to use for the center of  my String Thing Along star.  I decided to do a diamond-in-the-square setting, just to be different and scrappy.

Here's the first setting I tried:

for some reason when I laid it out I thought it looked a bit busy, and I rejected it as an option.  But now that I look at it again, it looks okay.  Nice and bright, the way I intended!

But after rejecting the one above, I decided to go with just one color for the points, to match the borders of the diamond string section:

That's really dull and boring, isn't it?  All you can see is that center, it looks like a big blue splat! 

After laying it out with those colors, I decided my problem was that the fabric was all solid... so I tried a third layout and color combination:

This one uses the same fabric for all the star points...  Hmm... 

I went ahead and pieced this one and trimmed it, but "now that I look at it"...  I believe it's that blue center part that's throwing everything off!  I don't like the third setting as much as I thought I would, so I'll probably go back to the first layout I did.  That center surrounding the diamond might need a fix, though; also, I'm thinking of making the points a bit smaller.  Back to the drawing board!

Sew forth and sew on