I like the movement of the stripes. I can't help with the problem. I hope you can get it to look like you want it to.

The problem is the star block. When the pattern was printed they skipped a step. The star is NOT centered in the block. It's sitting all the way to the bottom of the block and all the way to the right side of the block. So YES you have to add a strip to the left side of each block, but also to the top of each block. This will make it 81/2 x 81/2. Some times in testing and printing out patterns, little things get missed. But if you've trimmed up your blocks to center your stars and you want it to look the same, you'll need to re-trim and then add the extra. Good luck

Definitely need some coping strips on the stars. That's a really cool flag pattern.