Super-secret project

In a fit of crazyness I decided to create a quilt for The Husband's parents. Next November 4th they will be celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary. I've created a special design for them that will contain (gulp) 128 photos of their lives together as well as some applique and possibly other embellishment.

Yep. I don't know what the heck I was thinking.

But it is a pretty simple design. The applique will only be in the center medallion (is it still a medallion if it is square?) and there will be rings of photos alternating with regular fabric. There will be a total of four rings, each representing one decade, and the border will contain a quilted handprint of each family member--including the parents. The Husband and I will be making up some kind of phantom school assignment to procure those. The color scheme is dominated by the color ruby (or, my interpretation of the color ruby) because ruby is the designated anniversary gift for 40 years. Then I also included some fabric that has dogwood blossoms on it. I guess more or less because The Father-in-law has always admired the dual-colored dogwood in our yard. And it also was a coordinating fabric for my ruby choices. He. Anyways. Here is a photo of the fabric, which just arrived from Keepsake Quilting yesterday:

Note that there are pieces of The Girl's coat in progress in disarray in the background. It is taking me a long time to cut out the pieces for that. I'm excited to start sewing it, which I will hopefully begin this weekend. I'd like for it to be ready for Thanksgiving wear.