Thank you, thank you, thank you! I appreciate all your opinions, and have tired my arms out working on the design wall (back of a vinyl tablecloth), making so many variations. And I thought I was almost finished!
... so I'm going to let these ideas incubate a while. I find that it works best if you let things muddle around in your head for a while. But I honestly thank you for your opinions. I think I'm going to keep the flying geese, as some of those birds flew all the way from Australia, or Scotland or further. That was my intention in keeping all those duplicates. Like, "If you get lemons, make lemonade", if you get doubles in a quilt exchange, make flying geese
Every one is special, right? Margo, thanks for your super idea, I love your quilt idea - I put it up on the wall, and really liked it. However, I'm not very good at fancy quilting yet, and I only have a domestic machine. I may hand quilt this. Machine quilting makes me nervous (but I'll get over it - someday)
Even if you don't plan on doing "fancy quilting", adding a wide border to make the quilt a larger size would give you room to show off your hand quilting.
Even a plain cross-hatching there would be beautiful, and a pleasure to work on without having to deal with seams!