Thank you everyone. Each quilt is amazing. I just can't imagine the thousands of pieces in quilterdale's second scrappy above! That one is a masterpiece. All are lovely. I took the advice about "values" to heart and that was definitely what the problem was. i now have 3 piles of light/dark/medium to pull from but i have 2-3x more mediums than either light or dark. no problem..stash abounds so will cut more of each.