Thanks for all the wonderfully positive comments! I too love the colors. The first fabric I picked was the light background floral with the big turquoise / light blue flowers, then I added the darker small print with the black mixed in. Once I had the turquoise / black print chosen, the black was a given to make a bold contrast, and the rest fell into place easily.
This was a fun project, although I was somewhat overwhelmed at how to put it together at first, then thought to myself, "oh well, sink or swim" and just jumped into it. I now own two other backing fabrics.
I used a wavy stitch pattern between the blocks rather than stitching in the ditch because I thought it looked nicer and there was room for fudging. I also used clear thread, but have since learned that if you plan to ever iron your quilt you probably shouldn't use that since it may melt. The dotted border was quilted with a large scallop. It didn't quite come out exact on the corners, since this is lap size, so I ended up with a "pac-man" sort of look on the corners. I'm ok with that, since it will probably go to one of my grandchildren, who will most likely love that little "glitch". lol
Binding: I used black to give the final border a little more width, and to make sure any little mistakes were hidden. I must say that I learned how to do the binding properly after pulling out the stitches on one partial side and corner. After sewing the corner and checking to see how it would fold I found that my seam width was too narrow to get a proper fold on the 2 1/2 inch binding width. I now know that "The width of the binding seam is relative to the width of your binding". Here is a wonderful tutorial on binding that I found easy to understand:
http://www.connectingthreads.com/tut...ding__D99.html