Coast to Coast Traveling Bee {Month #1}

My last project before packing up my sewing space was to work on my first assignment for the Coast to Coast Traveling Bee. For the first month, I worked on Susan's quilt center. Here's what it looked like when I received it:

Her requests were near-solid prints with a modern feel in a rich rainbow palette. She also requested movement and classic quilt blocks. I decided to go with a ring of friendship stars around Susan's center starter. To give it more movement, I decided to alternate between 6" and 4.5" finished blocks, with all of my stars twirling in the same direction as Susan's flying geese.

Here's my original fabric pull:

I eliminated a number of fabrics because the prints were too large and colors that weren't quite rich enough. Instead of making each star in a different color, I decided to pick one fabric for each of my eight colors (pink, red, orange, yellow, green, teal, blue, and purple) and make both stars in the same fabric for a total of 16 stars. Here's all of my finished stars before I added the sashings:

I had to do quite a bit of quilt math to get the sashing pieces just the right size, but it turned out perfectly! (For some reason the teal is looking more robin's egg blue in these pictures, but it is actually a medium-dark teal print.)

This beauty is on its way to Audrey and I am waiting for Susan to send me Chelsea's quilt!

Sharing at Needle and Thread Thursday!