D172-3: Designing trial & error

I'm trying to create a table runner with the left over pieces from a previous project.

Current design

The design is built from a squashed diamond shape made from a motif in the fabric.  This motif, together with the shape of the fabric scraps, has determined the size of the whole thing, in a way.

Design idea doodle...

There's some plain-coloured contrast fabric remaining too and I hope to use the pattern fabric as two patterns - parts with birds and parts with just flowers - and sort of get three 'patterns' but I still wish I had another pattern to contrast...

This doodle is my ideal, but it has fat lines and I need something specific.  I was thinking I'd be able to create a leaf shape from the negative space made from tiling the motif piece, which didn't quite work out. The motif shape doesn't have the right kind of symmetry or depth in the curves and, thanks to the scraps, it's not that flexible.

Yesterday's effort, trialling negative space shapes

At the moment, I'm working on splitting the motif shape to create that sweeping line in the doodle, the one that breaks it into three levels, and then extending the design to capture the full motif at least twice.

I might end up paper-piecing this project (here's a how-to), which I haven't done before but I'm willing to try!