Crewel Quilt Underway

Yes, the title of this entry is intended as a play on words.  

Since I am still working on making hay from a sow's ear (hay = finished work and sow's ear = discoveries in my stash), you shouldn't be surprised to discover that today I found some crewel work I did - oh, some 40+ years ago.

The design was intended as a decorative pillow cover, but I never wanted to do that thinking the embroidery wouldn't last long if used that way.  So the piece just languished in various drawers and bins.  Today I thought, "Bingo, make this into a wall hanging!"  So I started pulling out fabrics I thought would work with the yarn colors. 

Here's what I found, and take special note of the striped fabric at the left because that was a real find.

I also had a trouble finding the right white - one that would at least coordinate with the odd white on which the crewel was stitched.  I had almost given up and was beginning to look for a color rather than a white, when my eye fell on a ridged white home decorator fabric recently released from a bin.

And here is what I did with the two today.

 Now I need to look for a medium and dark blue-purple fabrics.  It seems that I have yards of red-purples but none with the blue tone that will coordinate with the crewel wool.  And I'd like to find the darker of the two blues, also.  Fortunately, only a little of each of those colors will be needed; fat quarters will do.

Of course, it would help if I knew exactly what block design to add as the border.