Balance with chaos

Initial color layout of the table runner. Any opinions?

I had some rules to begin with. No repeat patterns together, no repeat colors together, maintain a repetitive order, pair chaotic patterns with calmer patterns. Once I had it laid out specifically to that recipe, then I mixed it up a bit, pairing some like colors, some like patterns, and taking my few blue diamonds and scattering them in a random fashion. (I also needed two of the blues to complete the middle orange chevron row since the set of oranges was lacking in the larger floral print.)

One of the reasons why a project like this can be daunting to me is I have an insane fear that I am horrible at matching colors. Like, when I was in elementary school, if it wasn't an easy two-color combo like red/green or black/white, I would hesitate to dress in anything polychromatic because I was afraid of being laughed at. (I was always laughed at anyways. I was a bit of a loner in grade school...)

This fear of color followed me into my adult life. I wear a t-shirt with jeans because jeans are the universal matching pants. I rarely put on makeup. And when it comes to the color compositions of my projects, I just about have a heart attack sometimes, even with a pre-matched jelly roll where all the work's been done for me!

I need order and rules to be able to feel confident that I made something work. I followed the directions, so there's no way I screwed it up. And yet, how am I to insert my own signature into something if all I'm doing is following rules, even if they're my own rules?

The whole time I was setting out the pieces of the runner, three words were repeating in my head. Balance with chaos. Balance out the colors with a sense of ordered chaos and it will come out fine. For a perfectionist like me who expects no mistakes from herself being confronted with the real world fact that nothing is perfect, being able to embrace chaos and order and balancing between the two is so relieving.

I think I've finally put words to this thought in my head on how exactly I can approach the concept of color and layout without eating my own hat in frustration. And once I put something into solid words, words that can be written on a page, repeated like a mantra, stored to memory in its exact form, then I do so much better when it comes time to retrieve the information and apply it. Words are like rules. They can not be broken and thus are impervious to imperfection.