Every year Karen Montgomery creates a Brown Bag Mystery quilt for the shops that attend her Sewposium business retreat for quilt shop owners. The shops then choose fabrics and assemble bags with everything needed for the quilt top, with the option of also purchasing a border fabric to make the quilt a bit larger.

The shops all handle the bags a bit differently but basically they either show paint chips of the fabric colors in each bag, or may show one fabric in the bag with information about the coordinating fabrics. Basically both the fabrics and the pattern are a mystery, so this project is not for someone who needs to have total control!

This year Karen created a quilt that is lap size, with the option of buying two bags to make an 84 inch square quilt.

I opted for the lap size quilt and I did purchase the optional fabric for the border, but I ended up not using it as an outer border…more about that in a minute.

I knew that the fabric would have daisies or sunflowers—it actually has both. I was really happy with the fabrics that arrived, but as I started to do the cutting, I realized I was missing a fabric. I contacted the shop and they told me that I didn’t get the background fabric, which they promptly sent along, with apologies. That turned out to be a white on white fabric. Hmmm. It just didn’t do it for me. I just seemed too white. So off I went to my local quilt shop where I purchased the brown fabric, with tiny, scattered white dots, it use as my background fabric. (The white on white has been shifted to another project!)

This is actually a beautiful pattern, which can look quite dainty with some colorways. There is a central four patch with arrows arms inside a star, inside a circular motif. Unfortunately, because the two dark blue fabrics have essentially the same depth of color, the star in my quilt isn’t visible unless you squint or are looking at the quilt at a distance in real life. I’m disappointed that the star isn’t more prominent in my quilt, but looking at quilts getting posted in the closed Facebook group for the project, that seems to be the case with a number of quilts. In others, the star is a prominent feature!

I quilted the quilt on my trusty older domestic Bernina 440. I did straight line stitching using orange thread and then put yellow loopy daisies or a blue forget-me-not in the larger brown patches. There is a green decorative stitch in the border of the quilt. I think this the first time I’ve ever used four colors of thread in a quilt…5 if you count the cream thread I used for the binding!

So what happened to the border fabric I purchased? It was actually the fabric I saw when my bag was shown. It’s way bolder than what I’d typically pick but I fell in love with it. I had no idea at the time that it was the border fabric and not a fabric in the quilt. I think I expected it would get cut up.

When I finished the quilt top and laid the border fabric down next to it was a definite NO GO! I decided to skip the extra border and the large border print became my quilt backing. So it has been included in the quilt. Below is a photo of the fabric next to the top and a picture of the quilt’s back. I know some of you will love the border. I just found it a bit too intense.

And the binding? I actually made double the amount of binding I needed for the “Fairy Lane Quilt” which I recently completed. The turkey red and white stripes and brown and white stripes are perfect with this quilt. The aqua and white stripes are a bit of a stretch, but they do coordinate with the dark bluish green leaves in the fabric so I think it works.

I plan to make another “Timeshare” quilt with fabric from my stash to see if I can get a quilt with all three elements in the design clearly visible. I’ve pulled the fabrics but I think I’m going to upload them into the Electric Quilt 8 quilt program to make sure that what I think will work, actually does! Stay tuned for that quilt round about September!

My particular Brown Bag had some disappointing fabrics in it this year, but I still do like the completed quilt. And Karen Montgomery’s pattern is, once again, brilliant!

If you are interested, click this link to see my version of Karen’s 2022 Brown Bag Mystery Quilt, “To the Point”.