Sort of nice to know that many of us had issues but resolved them in various ways. I know I would have really liked to have prints I could match instead of the fabric I had!
Here's what my final set looks like. I have a number of reservations about them. I already mentioned that I had a very narrow selection of fabric to start with and one of them was very green so I decided to extend the fabrics a bit farther. That was partially to soften that green and partially to extend the number of fabrics. Maybe I went a bit too far, all the periwinkle and lighter green shades were added during this step.
Because of the nature of the fabrics all along I've had quite a bit of variance in my shades and specific pieces coming out looking like they were from a different color group but this time I really noticed that even though I had pulled darks and mediums for this step overall the darks were coming out dark. And unfortunately some of the Refresh aqua pieces were coming out really on the dark or light sides of their nature when what I wanted was the medium!
I'm trying to reassure myself that it will all be fine in the end. Speaking of which, for those of you with cut yardage or kits, how close to the end are we getting? I just have unknown amounts in my color groups so I can't tell when I'm getting close to the end of the fabric. Obviously we haven't touched the Parakeet yet.
Oh! About those paper clips -- always be careful using them on fabric. These are coated and I bent out the ends a bit but very easy to snag on your fabric. I don't usually work on combinations like this and if I did I'd probably use the thread technique to keep my fabrics together. Super simple, just make a nice sturdy thread on a reasonably large needle, put a knot in the end and then stack your pieces in the order you want (in this case to keep them together, next step maybe in sewing order). I still label them with a piece of paper saying "bottom" (that helps hold them on the string anyway) and one for top, plus if I need a row identifier like A, B, C, etc.