Gift bag challenge

Every year, our Heart of Vermont quilt guild has a challenge, and whenever I hear about one, I pass the idea along to our leaders.  An online quilting friend told us about a challenge her guild did, and we have adopted it for the coming year.  Each person gets a gift bag and then has to make something quilted that is both inspired by the bag and fits inside it.

I was asked to write up the guidelines, and then Paula gave me a bag to come up with a sample.  Bless her, she chose a bag that's purple, blue, and pink florals.  I noticed some lacy bits about the edges, too, which made me think of my stash of hankies.  I got a few out and incorporated them into this table topper.  I made a few dimensional flowers as accents and also machine quilted it.  It will be nice on a hall table.  The original challenge had everyone buying a bag from the guild, but we decided it would be just as much fun if everyone brought in a medium (not too big, not to tiny) gift bag.  We'll put them into plain brown bags and let people draw them so it will be a real challenge.  At least the final product doesn't have to be very big!