I just went back and looked at your beginning picture again, and I just can't figure out what there was that made this ugly to you.
SO, I am looking at the pattern, and I am seeing a nine patch, some four patches, and then white bar ... and, I am thinking:
Was it the construction instructions that got you all flustered?
I had a chance once to help someone make a quilt with a pattern from 1976 ... I didn't work with it about fifteen minutes and thought:
Lord! If this had been my first introduction to quilting, I would NEVER have bothered!
Today, I am still appalled by some of the "old" instructions people use to confound the beginner ... I get the template and all of the hardest way .. but, whatever did anyone do to deserve being punished like that? <g>
Anyway, if you made this quilt again, Eddy, would you construct it the same way that the instructions led you to in the first place?
Could the construction have created your mindset?