An über-girly moses baket quilt (and a little plea for some advice!!)

After finding out that we were expecting a girl (yay!!!), I wanted to produce something really girly for her after spending 12 months looking at blue, brown, grey and green boys' clothes. I ordered a cupcake and strawberries, pink charm pack that I found on British Ebay (there are very few charm packs to choose from on German Ebay) and was delighted with the colours.

I never start out with a pattern when I'm sewing. I know this sounds ridiculous as I'm a beginner, but I love the creativity of just improvising and letting the work evolve. As a stay-at-homer, it's all too easy to become bogged down with the repetition of cooking, cleaning and doing laundry so sewing, to my own tune and as the fancy takes me, is very much my creative outlet. 

I'd recently seen a lovely hexagonal pattern on Laura's blog, http://www.needlespinsandbakingtins.com/ so I felt inspired to create this: 

I paper-pieced it and hand-stitched as I wanted it to have a special, personal feel to it and I used a long stitch for the first time to embroider the name we've chosen for DD. Do you like the name? I was quite pleased with the neatness:

After creating the hexagons, I thought of stitching lots more and sewing them all together but I love the look of simple, square patchwork, so I decided to applique the hexies onto a group of 10cm squares. 

Once I'd created a roughly 45 x 50 cm shape, I stitched the layers together using my sewing machine. I thought about creating the whole piece by hand, but my impatience to see the finished result got in the way :-D Do you think I managed to pick out the most girly material ever for the backing? That was my brief! 

My novice nerves got the better of me when it came to quilting! I wanted to use the machine to sew diagonal lines through each of the squares to stop the top layer from looking baggy or moving, but I daren't put the machine over it! Instead I handquilted 2 squares only, which lead to a less-than-perfect look at the back of the quilt. The underside of my stitches looks quite messy. HELP: What tips can you give me to keep hand-quilting stitches looking neat on the underside?? Could I perhaps just quilt the top layer and wadding together BEFORE adding the backing?

All-in-all, I'm quite pleased with my first attempt but I'd love to hear some tips from you pros out there please!