Honoring Ñaña through fabric design

So a few weeks ago I posted some pictures of a few hand embroidered heirlooms I inherited from my great-grandmother.  I have been trying to think of a way to honor her memory and give more people the opportunity to enjoy her beautiful handwork. Donating the items to a museum was one option, and I'll probably pursue that further eventually. But then in dawned on me... fabric design!

I've already been toying with the idea of trying to design fabric. Actually, it all started with my oldest little brother who is a really talented graffiti artist. He makes these little robots that I absolutely love! I've been nagging him (as any responsible big sister would do) to get his designs up on Spoonflower. I've even offered to digitize his sketches and figure out all the repeats for him! I'm hoping we are still going to pursue that path eventually, but he's taking the LSAT in October and will be a brand new father by Halloween, so right now I know his time is pretty limited. And he's only going to get busier!

So I've had fabric design on the brain for a while. But last week it hit me... Why don't I just make Ñaña's embroidery into fabric? Why didn't I come up with this sooner? So for the last week I've been playing around and trying to teach myself Adobe Illustrator. Did you know you can get it for $20/month on the cloud instead of however many hundreds of dollars it costs to buy it outright? For a program like illustrator that's a phenomenal deal, and you get a 30-day free trial. After using this program for a week I'd say the $20/month is totally worth it. Such a great program! But enough gushing about AI. Here is a screen shot of the dress motifs after tracing a photograph using AI (with the inspiration dress)

Since gradients in color are difficult to screenprint I just went with solid forms. I think it looks a bit cleaner and more modern. Then I took just the large blue/yellow flower, and his little blue/yellow friend, and tried my hand at making a tossed design with a 12" repeat. I came up with two options, one with the flowers close together, 

and one with the flowers farther apart.

Bear in mind the large flowers are 2.5" tall so it's a pretty big motif. The repeat is 12" by 12".... can you find it? 

So now I'd like to get your input. Which do you like better, the close version or the spread out version? Maybe you don't like either? I'd love to hear what you think in the comments below! In the meantime I'm off to make another pattern with some of the other motifs!