Shibori skirt with 16 panels – how should I order the panels?

Hi, in August I experimented with some indigo dyeing, which you can read about here. Then I wanted to try dyeing several pieces of cotton muslin to make a 16-panel Shibori skirt. (I wrote about how I made each design in this post.)

Now my challenge is finalizing the order of the panels. I dyed eight pieces of fabric, each with a different design but I tried to keep them about the same intensity of blue so the skirt will have a cohesive look. Even so, I’m not so sure they all work together. The skirt has eight panels for the front and eight for the back. It’s an A-line skirt from a Japanese sewing book Basic Black – so just imagine the panels in a trapezoid shape.

I dyed four smaller pieces of fabric for the top row of panels and four larger pieces for the bottom row, which is taller than the top row. This meant that I was limited to four specific designs for the top and four for the bottom. After fooling around with different variations, here’s the order I like for the top four panels of my Shibori skirt.

I posted another variation of this on Instagram and Twitter, which you can see here. On IG, Shana Levy McCracken (@lanachevy) suggested flipping the striped panel so the darker stripes were on the bottom, Ka Yun Cheng (@kayun.cheng) agreed – and so did I. On Twitter, Josefina Segura (@joevacom), a blogger (Coser a Color) from Uraguay, suggested this reorder of the panels, which is how I eventually got to this arrangement. I really appreciate getting comments and replies from social media!

Here’s one option for the bottom row…

… and here’s another option for the bottom row with the order of the last two panels flipped.

Now I need to decide which bottom row to use. Here’s option 1:

And here’s option 2:

Which one do you like best for my Shibori skirt? Option 1 or 2? I’m leaning towards Option 2. The darker bottom right panel seems to go better with the panel above it.

Happy sewing!