Thanks for the permission to use your blanket to help others.

You have good points that you mention about the borders being different depths. I know how that works. The idea of using self striping yarn is a good one. The other gal who wanted to do such a blanket had blocks of several different colors but no stripes or anything, so it would actually have been easier than yours as far as the intarsia color-work is concerned. On her's each block had a different pattern stitch going on, so that was an issue, but didn't effect the color-work part.
I have a good idea of what the back side looks like but folks who haven't done intarsia would be benefited by a picture.