I once made a banner of a realic bulldog in felt on canvas for my son's basebase ball team that turned out pretty well. All I did was photocopy the image a handfull of times, then cut out the various layers and shaded colored areas to use as cutting patterns for the different felt shapes that I then cutout and re-layered onto the canvas and affixed the felt with glue. I would think you could do the same technique with double-sided iron-on interfacing between fabrics layered onto a base fabric. I've also seen landscape quilting techniques on tv where they use charchoal pencils and fabric paints to emblesh the more difficult textures. Careful selection of fabrics in similiar but different tones and designs would be necessary as well. For instance with your avatar I would use an underlayer of a gray/tan batik fabric cut into the outline shape of the cat. Then I would layer the white patches and black strips, and green eyes, & pink nose shapes on top. Then perhaps use charchoal and/or chalk pencils/crayons to smear on the whiskers and fuzzy center of the ears. Then I would use a black perma-marker to outline the eyes, nose, and mouth. I hope that helps to give you a starting point to envision how you would go about doing the wall hanging of your grandson.