Irish Chain Failure

I spent a few days working on a quilt for my great-nephew, who is 12 or so.  His grandmother, my sister, has commissioned quilts for her grandchildren and we're taking one family at time.  Not that we planned it this way, but it's working out quite well.  Except that Josh has been a hard one to pin down.  He asked for a black and green quilt with X's.  


I thought of nine patch blocks in green and black placed so that the blacks would form the X that he requested.  I figured that I could easily add a second block for color and variety.  The nine patch would form an Irish Chain pattern and the secondary block would be something simple and quick.


Since Angie wants me to use some of mom's stash on each quilt, I thought I'd add in the olive green plaid that I used on Seth's quilt.  That is until I saw it on the design wall with the nine patch blocks1


It just doesn't work.  No matter what I tried I came up with the same problems.  So on Sunday when Richard and I ran to Alexandria for new tennis shoes for me, I insisted that we go by Hancock's.  I found a  couple o f green that might work, but nothing that had me thrilled.  Eventually I found a fabric that I like.  There's enough green that the fabric didn't clash with the black/green nine patch blocks.  

A closer look at the new fabric reveals little sea turtles swimming all over the place.  The green is almost the right color, there black outlines and soft golden yellow background to tone it all down a bit.

Not having to worry about what to do with the spacing between the nine patches really freed me up yesterday.  I even had a great chance to sew up a bunch of black/green strips.  Now to get back into the studio to press, cut and sew them into the 27 blocks I'll need.  I figure that if I work each day the way I did yesterday, I'll be delivering this quilt in a week or two!

Oh, now what do I do with the olive green blocks that I took out?  Any suggestions?