Can you believe after all of this, I still had to make another 80 flying geese and several half-square triangles.
I tried an idea and I think it is working great. So I will share.
On my center quilt block, I had many hoopings to get all of the embroideries finished. The many hoopings left my center with some puckers which I was not happy with. When I quilt, I want a perfectly flat surface. Here is what I did. First, I serged the four edges of the center block. I layed the center block out on my table that has a flat surface and sprayed it with water and tried to stay away from the edges. I then taped the edges down on the table with painters tape. I would lift up a section of the tape at a time and I pulled and stretched the block in the directions that I needed to get all the puckering out. Once I was happy with it, I sprayed it again with water and then I left it sit and dry. It is perfectly flat now. It might be a little distorted along the edges but I will just again square it up to the 18 inches that the block is supposed to be. This worked great! I also gave it a spray of starch after it dried.
I now also have a few of the blocks stitched together with the sashing.
I am getting close, the sashings are taking a lot of time also because I have to make sure that each star point is correct when I sew on the sashing.