Baby Quilt - Sailing

My niece is expecting and her second son is due next month!  Since she lives near the beach, I found what I think is the perfect quilt design to add to the nautical theme 

in this book:

I know you're all surprised at the author!  I've used this book to make several quilts, and have to say, I do appreciate the format and depth of instruction included.

Here's the quilt in the book:

And here's mine:

 {The blocks looking red are really the same dark pink color as the book quilt}.

I had some of the suggested fabric on hand, but improvised for the rest. The border stripes are from a man's a dress shirt I bought at a thrift store.

From the beginning of this project, I debated with what to do for backing.   I tried using remnants from the patchwork, but too many scraps just looked like a hot mess.  

I looked in the shops, found anchor fabric and such but they also didn't make the cut.

Then one day I opened an email notification of a blog post by a quilter.  There before me was a photo of four blue and white quilt blocks...

(Blatant swipe from imperamagna.com)

and for some reason, I was immediately reminded of signal flags.  

 

I decided to use the signal flags to spell out the baby's first name:

Quilt back

She liked it!

(My sincere apps to Freda for inspirational blocks).

I have another quilt top in the works.  Back for show and tell tomorrow.