Nautical quilt - the process

One of my high school friends (from back from when having a baby was SUPER scary, rather than extremely awesome) is about to have a baby. I knew I would make a quilt for them...it was just a question of what.  Daddy is a submariner, and Mommy & I met on the first day of high school because she was wearing a t-shirt from a regatta that I had sailed in. So I went on the hunt for some nautical fabric.

I think you'll agree that this is perfect. (Thanks to my mom for the suggestion of the fabric store in Barrington, RI.)

I wasn't sure how to maximise the impact in a quilt - I definitely knew that I didn't want to cut it into strips like a normal fabric. After some Flickr-spiration, especially here and here, I decided to take the plunge and fussy-cut the boats. I ended up with one of everything (and two speedboats, oops). I spread them out on some white from my stash, like this. Which I quite liked.

But then, I decided that it was definitely too plain, especially since I had picked up some really cute red and orange fabric at the same store.

So I sashed all of the pictures with white, and experimented with laying them out in strips. Somehow the fussy-cuts were all pretty much the same size. A little rearrangement (see the two motorboats, next to each other? BAH!)

And we have this! I had originally tried to quilt it in waves, to echo the waves on the boat print, but the combination of two layers of batting and a layer of soft, thick Navy (haha) blue flannel on the back conspired against me and made evil bumpy rumples. I think that's the technical term, anyway. The squiggles look fairly nautical and are definitely my best free-motion quilting so far.

The quilting is all finished now, and I've sewn the binding on the front - I'm about halfway through hand-sewing it to the back. The original binding was supposed to be a plain red, but both John and I decided that we liked the orange from Stepson's Mom's Wedding Quilt better, and there was plenty left over.

To the soon-to-be-Mommy, I know your nursery colours are green and yellow, and I'm sorry....they didn't have any green and yellow boat fabric! (There is some yellow on the submarine's propeller - does that count?)