"Piece of Cake" 2024 Brown Bag Mystery Quilt Completed

It took me a long time to get around to quilting this top which I finished in June. It sat around all summer, waiting! Seems appropriate to have finished now because this quilt feels very autumnal.

The pattern is called “Piece of Cake”, Karen Montgomery’s 2024 Brown Bag Mystery Quilt. My Brown Bag came from O’Sewpersonal in O’Fallon, Missouri. I exchanged two fabrics in my bag for 2 alternates in the same fabric line, Kim Diehl’s “Quiet Grace” line printed by Henry Glass & Co., Inc.

The colors in the fabrics are outside of my comfort zone. I tend toward bright primary colors or pastels. So I didn’t love with this quilt while I was working on it. It was only today, when I hung the finished quilt on the clothes line that realized that it really is a beautiful quilt.

I mostly used straight line quilting but there are free-motion quilted daisy-like flowers in the rust colored blocks and tiny clusters of berries in the setting border blocks which echo the berries in the black fabric.

The quilt is turned on it’s side in the photo above so that it didn’t drag in the dusty ground. Here is a photo of the quilt rotated.

Image rotated to show the quilt as it’s intended to be shown.

And finally a couple of pictures of my assistant, who has taken an active part in the assembly of this quilt. Click to see him earlier in the process. Seems like he thinks he’s the subject of my photograph and then turns around and realizes that maybe he isn’t the star this time!

"Piece of Cake" 2024 Brown Bag Mystery Quilt Top

Assembled! Here is my version of Karen Montgomery’s 2024 Brown Bag Mystery Quilt she has named “Piece of Cake.” I wasn’t so sure about the colors while I was sewing it, but now I think this is one stunning quilt.

Back in February, when my bag of mystery fabrics arrived, I pulled out two reds which I didn’t particularly like. You can read more about that in my post from February 22, 2024. At the time I knew I’d swapped in fabrics of similar values to those I’d decided not to use, but I really had no idea what they would look in the finished quilt top. Whew. It worked out!

Like many of the other mystery quilt participants, I also decided to use a print fabric in the 4 patches flanking the center of the quilt. Karen has them as background fabric, with the intention that they could be used to do a fancy quilting design in that negative space. With all the dark fabrics in this quilt, I felt that having 4 cream patches wasn’t the best option for my quilt. I did lay it out with the background patches, but I felt it was just too white.

This quilt is assembled on the diagonal. The steps in Karen Montgomery’s mystery quilt are always very easy. But the assembly, despite all her excellent instructions, is always mind boggling. It’s the point where I’m so glad I didn’t decide to make more than one version because the piecing steps are so easy! But when I’m done, I’m so glad I made at least one!

"Cake Stand" Block

Karen Montgomery revealed the 2024 Brown Bag Mystery Quilt pattern a few weeks ago. She called the quilt “Piece of Cake” and at the reveal explained why: The main block in the quilt is called “Cake Stand.”

The steps in Karen’s mystery quilts are always deceptively easy. The challenge comes with the assembly. This one isn’t too hard if you carefully follow her excellent “exploded” diagram. But it takes lots of checking and rechecking to avoid flipping blocks.

I’m slowly putting the quilt together, but with two adult dogs and a puppy with chronic diarrhea, I’m only managing a couple rows a day. The other day this is how I was informed that it was supper time and that sewing time for the day was over!! Quitting is all you can do when your design “wall” is blocked!

My Version of the Brown Bag Mystery Quilt 2024, "Piece of Cake"

Every winter, Karen Montgomery offers a Brown Bag Mystery Quilt. This year the title is “Piece of Cake.” The participating shops know what the finished quilt looks like and they pick the fabrics for the bag. They might just show paint chips of the colors or one possible fabric for the bag. But this project is essentially an unknown to the quilters participating.

I looked at a couple shops and the one fabric I saw that appealed to me is out of my comfort zone. But I really liked it. It was “Cranberry” from Kim Diehl’s “Quiet Grace” line printed by Henry Glass & Co., Inc.

“Cranberrry”, photo from the Henry Glass & Co. Inc website.

I didn’t know Karen Deihl’s fabrics so I did a quick search to have a look. To my eye it looks a bit retro/prairie. But I loved the rich red in this fabric so decided to take a chance on this bag.

Here’s what I got.

Fabrics picked by the shop for my Brown Bag.

Wow. These are really dark fabrics…and no sign of the “Cranberry” design I liked. Oops. Now what? The background cream is great and I like the red berries on black and the tiny floral on green. I really don’t like either of the red fabrics…especially the red and cream one.

So I went back online to look for other Karen Diehl fabrics I could possibly substitute. Mind you, I have no idea what this quilt pattern looks like! I only have yardage amounts and I heard that a lot of the pieces are small so large prints aren’t a good choice unless you just want the colors and don’t mind the designs disappearing.

The photo at the top shows the fabrics I am going to use. I took photos of them and put them in grey scale with the 2 fabrics I am jettisoning.

In the left hand photo, the cream and red origin fabric is paired with the yellow green floral fabric. They have virtually the same color density, so I’m fairly confident that is a good swap. In the right hand photo is the dark red fabric paired with the brown and cream floral. The background of the brown floral is almost as dark as the red fabric, but the flowers are much brighter than the paisley pattern in the original. So this choice is a risk. But I really like my modified selection of prints, so I’m going to see what happens!

And so begins yet another adventure.

Speaking of adventures, I just adopted an 8 week old puppy last week. With every 2 hour potty breaks, and not as many naps as my last puppy, I’m not getting much done. So don’t be surprised if you don’t get an email announcing a new blog post every Thursday. But I’ll try my best to keep the posts coming!