Graduation quilt for granddaughter - Post #2

I was so disgusted with the progress on the quilt for my granddaughter that I took everything back off the design wall and took the blocks to my small quilt group for advice.  

Here's the comments I got from them:

   Ditch the bright green blocks

   Ditch the tissue box rectangles

   Ditch the striped pieces

   Keep working on it with the pale colors

Here's what I thought I needed to do:
  Ditch the large 16" squares and use them in a different quilt.  
  Use some ivory to brighten up the quilt.
  Try to make it more of a colorwash instead of jarring background colors.

After the input, I decided to try drafting it as an on-point quilt with the 3 large blocks down the center.  Here's my sketch:

And here's the progress 

It started to look half way decent; or I just started getting used to the pale colors.  Nope, it still wasn't doing anything, so off the wall it went again.  I added some blocks of beige and white stripe.  Here's the next attempt:

Still yucky!  So I put the stripes on point and got rid of all the dark blocks.  Here's the one that led to the final layout.

Stay tuned to see if this paler version made it to the end.