Welcome to the Board! Your story sounds a lot like mine this Christmas. At Thanksgiving I showed my daughter a quilt I was in the process of making...explaining that I was in a class and this one I was showing her was in her colors, but was going to be a charity quilt. Did she like it?
Talk about bored! She really didn't like it because I used purple which isn't one of her colors. I explained that I had used the not so great blocks because it was a practice of the technique and that I had another one in the works that was more in her colors. Again blah response. I was upset and wasn't sure I wanted to give one to her for Christmas.
I confirmed her colors and kept working on the quilt. Meantime I finished the charity quilt and fell in love with it (I wasn't so sure about it myself before). Because our guild had already gifted the quilts this year, I put the charity quilt on the back of my couch and kept on working on the gift quilt.
She came home for Christmas and wrapped up in that charity quilt like she had never seen it before. I couldn't pry it out of her hands. So, before she left for home after Christmas, I showed her the one I was intending to make for her to see if she really wanted it. This time she raved, especially about the back which I am piecing in complementary colors that don't match the front of the quilt (making it reversible). Turns out the back is more in her apartment colors, but the front is also liked because I used a different setting.
Once I get my camera working better, I'll post the results of both quilts. They really are turning out nice. Just goes to show that sometimes you need to plant the idea first and check back to make sure you are still on the same page with your recipient. With all the work we put into these quilts, sometimes it is better to make/start something and allow the recipient a chance to help make it what they want during the process, so they have memories of the process as well as the result. It makes the result more personal to them.