Hmm... in the thread about things I am good at and things I am not, I am not good at samplers or putting together random/orphan blocks. One of my tubs of fabrics are Civil war style/appropriate. I have two projects planned for those (hopefully I put the patterns in with the tubs) but something like this might work nicely and help me use up fabric and work in an unfamiliar style.
I am trying to improve my paper piecing skills and something like this might be good to take to my sewing group -- but I should probably cut my planned quilts into kits first and realistically, that might take me a year or so to get to.
I have done the brown sack/completely random sort of thing only once before. I made an "ugly tie" crazy quilt. Mostly 1970s poly ties with all sorts of designs and textures. Gutted and washed the ties and put them in a big black garbage bag and shook them up. Then without looking I picked out 10 ties and put them into brown paper sacks and rolled the ends shut. Then when I made the crazy quilt blocks I had to use all the ties and only the ties per bag per block.