Beothuk, Baby!

Today's little finish is Beothuk Baby, a gift for my nephew and niece-in-law. They are expecting their first child, a little boy, and the family is very excited!

This pattern is called Beothuk Star, and was designed by Sandra of Musings of a Menopausal Melon fame. She's the daughter of a famous Canadian, and her design honors the aboriginal people of Newfoundland. The family who will receive this quilt are also Canadian, which is a nice connection all around, don't you think?

Sandra published this pattern as a generous, free quilt along. I selected gray, teal and aqua as my colors since they are my niece's favorites. The four corner stars feature fabrics with balloons, birds, flowers, mushrooms, and pseudo-scientific scribbles. I knew a secondary pattern would produce the center star, so I chose a rich, dark teal batik so it would really pop.

The gray background fabric is Essex linen, a cotton blend with really nice texture. While it does tend to fray a bit, it quilts like a dream. 

For the backing, my DH Sean chose this super fun nautical print. It's rare to find power boats represented in fabric, much less submarines, so when I found 7 yards of this on sale, I snapped them up.

This little purple-hulled tug boat is the closest in shape and capability to our own boat, Vector. I like how the hook-swirl quilting motif looks like waves, especially in turquoise thread.

I took a variety of boaty glamour shots for this quilt, in keeping with that cool background fabric. Here is Beothuk Baby in front of our life raft and next to our dinghy.

And here it is hung over the back of the flybridge settee and in front of the EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radiobeacon.) We don't just sit around sipping cocktails in swimsuits here on Vector, you know. We do take our safety equipment seriously.

The binding fabric is a fun plaid in blues, greens and a bit of red. You can see a little of the binding in this shot of the quilt all rolled up and sitting on the seat of my scooter. That's Leopold, my new scooter mascot. He is named after Leopold Stokowski, who had similar wild, white hair.

Many thanks to Sandra for putting together such a great pattern! I had fun during the quilt along, and even got halfway though making a second quilt in the pattern with very different fabrics. That one will get finished eventually, but meanwhile I'm linking to the final Parade of Finishes. Go check out all the other fun interpretations of this pattern!