I am in a Yahoo quilt group, we're all very attached to each other. A couple of years ago, one of our members announced that she was terminal, and had a very short time left. I organized (unknown to her, which was hard to do, considering it was a Yahoo group) a Friendship Block plan, where anyone who was interested could make as many block(s) as they wanted, inscribe the block(s) with words of hope and inspiration, and send them to me for assembling into the top, then I quilted it, and sent it to one group member who lived close to the patient. She was thrilled and COMPLETELY surprised.
Her husband told us later that he put it in her casket with her, but that it was an absolute comfort to her in her last days.
BTW, there was NO pink ribbon fabric in the entire quilt.
It was about 50x70 in size. We didn't "assign" colors or anything, just had everyone use the same pattern. It was wonderful seeing all the inscriptions everyone put on their blocks.
Good luck, and blessing on both you and your friend!!