Great quilt! I love the colors! I too thought of something rather circular. Since you are a beginner, how about an arc on both sides of the small strip, running from one end to the other of the strip. (Hope I am explaining this all right)
You could probably keep sewing for along time without stopping. It would end up looking like flower petals with the strip down the middle of the petals, since you would have an arc on each side. Would make an interesting secondary pattern. Can you picture that from my
description. And you may be able to stablize the quilt first by doing a stich in the ditch down the middle... top to bottom, and side to side, if you wanted.
Or... maybe it would be better to start in the middle, and go to the edge with a line of arcs... same idea as straight quilting, but use the arcs. Then you could go back and do a long line of quilting on the other rows to finish the quilt. Am I making any sense? I can see it in my head, but trying to write it down is hard! LOL