I am a-palled!

I have a friend named Alice in California who is making her own casket pall. What, you may ask, is a casket pall? It's the cloth that gets draped over one's casket for one's funeral. She's piecing the blocks in diamond shapes in shades of black, grey, and cream, and then embellishing them in any colors. I asked her if I could embellish a block for her, and she agreed to let me.

Now I should explain about Alice. Some consider Alice "Looney"...including her family, evidently, as they have called her Betty the Loon. On the Newbies list, she is known affectionately as "Looney Sis" by Crazy Judyth. Alice has a crafting "shed" in her backyard that is known as "The Looney Bin". Yes, Alice is delightfully Looney in the finest sense of the word.

Here is the naked block as she sent it to me.

I knew what I wanted to add to her block, but had to think about it for several weeks to figure out how to do it. As the Wicked Witch of the West says, "These things must be done delicately."
I finally settled on painting the image on cotton fabric. It's the end of the old Looney Tunes cartoons, minus Porky Pig stuttering (I didn't think he'd be formal enough, despite his bow tie).

And here's how it looks appliqued to the block. I'm hoping Alice won't think it's TOO irreverent, and that her family will not hate it. I want to go on record here by saying that I don't personally believe that death is the end for any of us. It may be "that's all folks" for the physical body, but it is my belief that the spirit that is really "us" will go on to bigger and better things; that a better saying might be "this is just the beginning folks!", but that wouldn't fit into the little circle.

I've got more stitching and embellishing to do, and Alice has said there's no rush. I'm glad to hear that. I hope it's many years before she is ready to use her pall.