CQJP - Block Reveal for April

I've finished stitching my fourth block for the CQJP which is a companion to last months block.  Last month I did a CQ block about the family home I had painted.  This month I included the family that lived in the home.    I don't know of any photos of them all together, so I had to improvise.  Before he died, dad had given me separate photos of my great-grandparents that I re-sized to go together a little better.  They weren't very big snapshots and the lighting wasn't good.  I also had the middle three photos of their children but was missing two of the boys.  Fortunately a couple of my dad's cousins were able to provide nice pictures of their dads.

My series is called Keys to the Past and each block has or will have an old-fashioned key of some sort attached.  My color inspiration is from the monthly birthstone.  These two blocks are for January's Garnet and February's Amethyst (I love the purple colors!).  I've used the same background fabrics on all the blocks.  It is hard to get the colors of the individual blocks accurate since I am taking them each month as I complete them and lighting conditions are never the same.

All three images on the following block are copies of my paintings which I've reduced in size and converted to sepia (brown) tones.  To see the original paintings, refer to my previous CQJP post from last month.  The block above is obviously old family photographs which have also been resized and converted to sepia tones.

It is such a pleasure working on these blocks.  I find myself asking the age old question "what is the meaning of life".  Ha, anyone have an answer (*smiles*)?  I wonder what their life was like, what made my great grandparents immigrate to the United States, what was that trip to the new world filled with uncertainty like, what were their lives in Germany like, how did they meet, what did they do for fun, were they close, what was grandma like as a young girl...  As you can tell, it is easy to let my mind wander as I stitched.