I did this for my MIL's retirement. It was a dinner and I had all the blocks prepped and ready to go and wrote out directions and placed them by everyone's plate and went around to everyone and told them and still had a few blocks I had to unstitch and restitch so the writing was in the right direction. In this case I would just maybe put the names of everyone with their well wishes underneath on the back-maybe make the back muslin and attach by handstitch some of the savable ones and then just rewrite the ones you can't. Good luck and I am glad to hear your friend made a complete recovery!
Hugs
April