This quilt might be ugly

I enjoy making quilts.  I have made a handful in the last few years, most of them for children (because machine quilting anything over toddler sized would stink!).  This was the first one that I made that was larger than a wall hanging. 

It was for my daughter's second birthday.  For my nephew's birthday I made this:

This one was unique because the back was as fun as the front:

For my other nephew I made this. You can tell I have a think for squares and rectangles!

I've even made a t-shirt quilt for my brother:

And the largest quilt I've ever made was a king-sized one for our bed.

My son's second birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks, and I decided to make him a little quilt.  I wanted it to be simple, so I decided on a variation of a nine-patch that I'd seen awhile back.  I found some cute turtle print that I wanted to be the main fabric, since he loves his turtle pillow pet.  Well, it has some strange greens in it.  And while trying to find coordinating fabric I picked out some polka dot fabrics that had blue and brown.  I bought a few different browns and blues and greens to add to the mix.  I thought the combination would look good together, but I'm really not feeling it:

This is not the completed quilt top, it's just the blocks laying on top of the green fabric, but this will be sort of how it looks when pieced together.  It's just kind of weird.  In fact, I am afraid that it's kind of ugly.

I also have some brown to be a border, and I took it out and laid the pieces on the brown.  I think I like it better?  But I'm not sure.  I'm sad that it's not really living up to my vision.  I don't really have the budget to get different fabric, so this will need to work . . . somehow! One part that I'm excited about will be a line of marching turtles across the bottom.  That might salvage it.

On a positive note, I also made some placemats tonight.  The ones I originally made were pretty beaten up, so I need some fresh ones.  These came together super easy: two layer of home dec fabric and two packages of skinny bias tape.