Place-mat Progress

I'm making good progress on the tree place-mats from America Quilts for Christmas magazine.  I thought that these would make a nice gift for one of my son's teachers.  She's making a real difference for him and I wanted to show my appreciation.  But, I have to say, I've lost my motivation on this project.  They are a little lack-luster to me.  Maybe I can jazz them up with my machine quilting but I can't help but say meh when I look at these.  Is it just me?  Am I being too critical?  I think they are very nice though - just not really my style - maybe that's it?

I chose to do the inside out method on these instead of a binding since I think that place-mats lay so much nicer on a table if they are not bound.  A binding gives them an edge that can be tippy on a table and I don't like that.

The thing that I am not thrilled about with this pattern though is the waste!!   I'm not sure if you can see it in the picture but there was sooo much wasted fabric from the ways that the big center trees were put together.  The center trees are solid pieces - but that means that I have a lot of big pieces of the green batik and the background fabric cut into triangles that I'm going to have to do something with.  I think, if I was ever to make these again, that I would change the piecing to be more fabric efficient.  Now what to do with those scraps hmmmm.

The thing I loved about this project was that it gave me an opportunity to use my Accuquilt Go! triangle in a square die for the smaller trees in the boarder - yey!!!  I really liked using the die - it made cutting all those triangles so much easier and faster and accurate!  I found I had to get used to piecing with the dog ears already cut off - I think we're all accustomed to our own cutting - so using a different cutter style was a bit of a challenge to me.  But I really liked it!  It would have taken a long time for me to cut out all those triangles but I was finished in minutes!

Any advise on this project for me?  How can I add some jazz to them?