This is the reason for the name "Brown Bag Quilt". This quilt top is put together in completely random order, without matching fabrics. After you’ve cut all of your rectangles, put them all in the brown paper bag and shake it up good. As you start assembling the rectangles into squares, reach in the bag and grab two rectangles (don’t peek) and sew them together. Keep on this way until you have sewn all the rectangles together in pairs. You will have 96 pairs, 4 1/2" X 4 1/2"

Now, put all the pairs back into the bag and start pulling them out and sewing the pairs together to make sets of 4 rectangles. You’ll have 48 sets of 4 rectangles, 4 1/2" x 8 1/2"

You will use the 1 1/2" by 6" strips to make the 9 patches. Sew these strips together in sets of 3, in the following order: 8 dark/light/dark strips and 4 light/dark/light strips. (20 dark strips, 12 light strips)

Crosscut each of these sets into 1 1/2" units, you should have 30 D/L/D and 15 L/D/L units. Assemble these into your 9 patch squares, you will have 15 9-patches.

You will need 4 more stashing strips than you were able to cut from the 2 1/2 yard strips. These will come from the remaining border strips. From each of 2 of the border strips, cut 2 - 8 1/2" sashing strips, set these 2 border strips aside. Mark them with a safety pin or other method to keep them separate from the 4 border strips that are uncut.