...making progress on my Hexy MF

Making slow and steady progress on the flowers for the Hexy MF quilt.

I'm making the original size (72" x 84") and that needs 68 flowers (or 476 hexagons) for the centre panel and 6 large (42) and 2 small (12) for the borders. Plus a few odds and sod for some buds.

I'm at the point where I have 51 of the large flowers sewn together and hexagons based for a further 9. A few more to baste and sew but I'm getting ready for the next step and have the added satisfaction that I can see I'm almost there.

I'll just sew the flowers together in rows and then together into a centre panel. See how casually I throw those two steps together. I doubt it will be a quick step.

Despite that I have decided the time has come to choose and purchase a background fabric.

I want something with texture, not to busy, and I am not married to a colour but it needs to look OK against the flowers and be able to cope with a green (also not yet chosen) for the border stems.

I'm thinking Robert Kaufman Quilters linen. It is solid with a bit of a texture and comes in a good range of colours. When I chose my fabrics for the flowers I was going for a fresh Japanese vibe - something that wouldn't look out of place with linen and that aesthetic was what I went back to in my mind when I started to think about the colour I wanted for the background.

Because of the work that has gone into this one I have taken some extra steps to choose the right background first time. I have visited the LQS but had trouble finding the colour/print combo I want in the stores so have ordered some swatches of several of the Quilters Linens from Pink Chalk Fabrics.

The 2" strips make visualizing a bit more difficult than when I could lay them out on a bolt in the store but I have narrowed it down to these three colours.

Which one do you think?