Sailboat Baby Quilt!!!

I am super excited about this quilt!  I made it for my brand new nephew and gave it to him (to his parents, really) last weekend.  This is a sailing family ...

... so I was super excited when I found this paper-pieced sailboat pattern at Ants to Sugar.  I learned to paper piece at Quiltcon, so this was a great opportunity to keep my skills up and make something really cool at the same time.  The fabric I used for the sails is a text print with sailing-related words.  It's from the Daysail collection by Bonnie and Camille from Moda.

I quilted in the ditch around the sailboat, did wavy lines in the water, stars in the sky, and a line of waves on the horizon.  Here's the back:

It's not super clear in the picture, but the top fabric on the back is origami boats.  The bottom of the back has more of the sailing words, and the two middle prints are sea animals.

The whales are Preppy the Whale by Elizabeth Hartman.  They were quick and easy to piece, despite the fact that they each have a fair number of very small pieces.

I quilted the whales in the ditch, too, so there are ghost whale outlines on the back.

I'm really happy with this quilt.  I love how it looks, and I feel like the piecing (especially the sailboat, but also the whales) turned out really well, better than I knew I could do.  I felt that way about the lone star quilt I made for this nephew's older sister when she was born, too!