Quilt for Holly

Today, I started to make a quilt for a baby called Holly. She is the first child of a friend of my daughter, Sophie, and has been diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy. She will probably not live past 12 months. Having lost a child myself, I offered to make Holly a quilt. Her parents don't want a traditional pink frilly one, so I looked for inspiration for something different. In my studio, I came across these 4 appliqued fish blocks that I made with Electric Quilt and which I hand-stitched with blanket stitch, so I decided to make them the focus of the quilt. You can click on the photo for a closer look.
The blocks are 9", so I set about cutting 3 1/2" strips of plain hand dyed fabric to make nine patch blocks to go with them. These are the units I made up and then cut into strips.

Then I realised that my 9" fish blocks would only be 8 1/2" when sewn, while the nine patch blocks would be 9". Horrors! Fortunately I had some Nancy Crow "Boxes" fabric, so devised this cunning strip to run between the blocks to make them the correct size.
However, doing this meant I had to rethink the whole layout of the blocks, and I needed to make some (ahem) adjustments by including the Boxes fabric into the design.
Here are the blocks roughly laid out. I'm quite happy with this,so will go ahead over the weekend with sewing it together and adding a border. I'll aim to make it about 40" square. Watch this space!

PS I have pieces of the Nancy Crow fabric tied to my bag handles so I can easily identify my suitcase on baggage carousels - I figure hardly anyone else is likely to be doing the same, and it's distinctive. Thanks, Nancy!