A Story of 12 Quilts - Part 3

I really like BOMs.  No matter how busy I am, I can usually manage to get one block done a month.  In 2008, the local quilt shop offered the Brown Bag BOM.  Each participant brought a brown grocery bag with enough fabric to make 12 blocks. Then each month you took home a different Brown Bag and brought it back the next month with a completed 12.5" block inside (see Part 1 for a full description of the BOM guidelines).  The 2008 BOM quilt was made from a set of practice blocks I made each month to be sure I didn't waste anyone's fabric working out construction issues.  Part 1 and Part 2 show all the practice blocks and the corresponding blocks that went back with each brown bag I contributed to.   

During the last BOM meeting, we each got our Brown Bag back after 11 months of traveling and each showed off what was in our bags.  Here's what was in mine:

 

 

 

 

Pretty cool blocks, I was pretty happy with what was in the bag.  As was most everyone else.  Yes, there were only 9 blocks in my bag, as was the case for most of the other participants.  There should have been 11.  Many of us had started reporting in at the monthly meetings, at about month 5, that the bags were short on the number of completed blocks.  That last night, the quilt shop owner apologized to many of us saying that some participants had just been too busy to make blocks for the bags they had taken home.  She had insisted that all bags be returned each month, so they could be rotated.  You really only had a month to work on the block.  I do understand that there are times when things that come up which can make completing a project with a time constraint difficult, but I still felt a bit cheated, as I had made 11 blocks and put a lot of effort into the program.  Not much to be done about it at that point.  The shop owner had tried very hard to get everyone to finish their blocks prior to our last meeting. 

I wanted to make my last practice block for the 2008 BOM, so I made block 10 for the Brown Bag Quilt as well:

After trying to come up with a quilt layout using only 10 blocks, I decided to make two more blocks so I'd have 12. 

 

One of these days I need to get these set together, but probably not this year.  It will probably stay a UFO until next year.   Due to family issues the sponsoring quilt shop has had to cut back on hours, staff, space and fabric, so I haven't been there in about 9 months.  So I don't know if anyone from class ever finished their quilt tops.  It would be fun to see how each individual set their blocks. 

Thanks for letting me share the story of these 2 quilts.   This was probably the most challenging BOM I've done, but also one of the most fun.  If you have a group that participates in a yearly BOM program, this one is worth a try.