Stuck project...Ocean waves quilt

I was cleaning up my sewing room back in Feb. and ran across these:

Half a salad box full, no idea when I ever made them or for what!  All 1.5 inches perfectly squared up.

Well I always wanted to make an ocean waves quilt and to try Bonnie Hunter's method which saves having to do set in seams.

I used them all up and got this

Designed this border which I think is super good:

I tend to like to see the design shapes finish at the edges and so devised this sort of weird compressed hst (rectangular instead of square)  (thanks to eq7!!)

So, I am happy with the top!  It finished at 31" x 49".

The problem is the quilting.  I have quilted it once, with sort of wavy lines of stitches (free motion on the sewing machine) and it just looked like the dog's breakfast.  So I ripped it out and cut a new back, basted it again and took a stab at hand quilting it, which was really not fun because of all the seam allowances and it wasn't really enhancing the pattern at all so I took that out as well!

Aaaaargh!

I see that some motif might look good in the red squares, but am really stumped on what to do over the wave parts.

I am trying not to just do "whatever" and be done with it!  Also a bit sick of stitch in the blasted ditch!

Oooo!  Maybe this is the getting cranky stage of design?  Maybe I shouldn't have signed on to that process pledge thing!  This could get scary!   lol

If anyone has quilting suggestions for this though, feel free to let 'er rip...I need all the help I can get!

Love,

Sarah