Coast to Coast Traveling Quilt Bee {My Quilt Center}

My very good friend Audrey of Hot Pink Quilts asked me this fall about putting together a small traveling quilt bee and I immediately said yes! I have had so much fun participating in the Instagram traveling quilt bee this year and since it is almost over, it's exciting to start on another traveling quilt.

It took me a long time to decide on a color scheme and then even more time to decide on a center motif. I knew from the beginning that I wanted this quilt to be a medallion, since my other traveling quilt is very much not a medallion.

I finally settled on using a layer cake of April showers that I have had for over two years as my inspiration fabric. My intention is that my bee mates can use the layer cake as well as any additional fabrics in their own stashes that would complement the line well. Since the line is red, navy, aqua, yellow, grass green, and grey, that should be fairly easy to accomplish!

My next task was figuring out what I wanted to do as my center. I decided on using this tutorial for a lone star block. I had to modify my cutting since I was cutting from 10 inch layer cake squares rather than from yardage, but it ended up with very little fabric waste, which is awesome!

To get it squared up better, I added some of the cut layer cake fabrics around the block as a border. Here's my finished quilt center:

I did have to unpick the center because it "puffed" a lot. I took in three seams (the three seams holding the four quarters of the center of the star together) and it is essentially flat at this point. Working with lots and lots of biased edges does have this as a significant disadvantage, but luckily just taking in the center seams was a quick and easy fix!

This is already on its way to Audrey, and Susan's quilt center is on its way to me! Isn't her rainbow center starter gorgeous?

Happy New Year to you! Sharing at Building Blocks Tuesday!