Hello Quilty Friends!
Happy Thursday to you!
I love September and the approaching autumn season! It’s such a refreshing time of year. This summer was certainly one of the hottest on record here in northwestern PA. Wow! Then it was Labor Day and suddenly the weather turned very fall-like.
It reminded me of when I was a kid going back to school the first week of September, wearing my crisp new school clothes — sweaters, jeans, long sleeve tops, new school shoes, not like the shorts and tees of today.
Speaking of inspiration, today is the Thursday after the first Friday of the month and you know what that means — NEW PATTERNS. YAY!
NEW September VRD Rose Card Patterns
Drum roll please………
And here they are!
Get the print collection HERE
(Sorry, the collection isn’t offered as a digital set, but the patterns are available as digital downloads individually, below)
Aren’t they fun??? Our designers never disappoint, do they? There’s definitely something for everyone here with a new panel pattern (Good for Gold), several fat quarter patterns (Roam, Stuffing, Pavers [can also use 10″ squares]), and a 2 1/2″ strip pattern (Ric Rac Roll). We’ve got traditional and modern. Sizes range from smaller throws to a large twin-sized bed quilt (Ric Rac Roll).
But wait! There’s more!
Check out this month’s table runner and snack mat.
Get the print pattern HERE
Get the digital pattern HERE
Get the print pattern HERE
Get the digital pattern HERE
By now you’ve most likely noticed how much I love to create seasonal patterns. You see, I have this goal to someday have my seasonal decorating organized into storage crates — one for each season/holiday. Then I can just grab the right crate for the season/holiday and add my decorative touches like quilted pillow covers, table runners, wall quilts, throws, etc. How close am I to achieving this goal? Not even close (eye roll here). But it’s important to have goals, isn’t it?
Speaking of Snack Mats, have you picked up on my evil nefarious plan yet??? Yep, my plan is to create a different Snack Mat for each month of the year. So far I’ve created 7 Snack Mat patterns, so that means I’ve got 5 more to go in order to have a full year of Snack Mats. And, yes, I’ll be adding these to my seasonal/holiday crates as well.
All of the Snack Mats finish at a generous 8″ x 14″, which makes the perfect landing spot for your mug of coffee/tea/cocoa and a little something yummy on the side. And at 8″ x 14″, they do double duty as a small place mat. When I worked at my local small town public library for 11 years, I ate lunch (or dinner) at my desk most of the time. It would have been super fun to pull out a new seasonal mini place mat (Snack Mat) for my desk every month to make my meal at work a little more special, even if it was leftovers from the day before. Snack Mats also make great gifts for yourself or for someone else. You can find all of the Snack Mats to date right HERE.
Now that you are super hyped about our NEW September patterns, grab ’em all and get started with your new makes because September is a great month to get back to quilting.
A Spot of Decluttering
As I mentioned earlier, I am feeling so much more inspired as autumn is only about 10 days away. Ever since I bought my new-to-me sewing table back in July, I haven’t been able to get back into the cleaning and organizing groove. Of course, the need to declutter and clean wasn’t just because of my new table, it’s been an ongoing project. In fact, I started 2024 off by having a goal to get my spaces cleaned and organized. Truthfully, I haven’t made much progress.
Over the weekend I was lamenting to my pal, Mary Lee (Hey Mary Lee!), that my spaces are such a disaster and that I really want to dive back into getting my space shipshape. In truth, I basically feel paralyzed because there’s so much that needs done, there’s only one me, and I feel so completely overwhelmed. I just don’t know where to begin.
Mary Lee, in all her wisdom (she is a retired children’s librarian, after all, so I suspect she knows everything!) shared some great ideas, so I thought I’d share them with you.
Think Small
Utilize small pockets of time to do smaller tasks. You will be amazed at how much you will get done by focusing on the small things.
Break Big Jobs into Small Bites
Instead of cleaning the whole bookcase, clean one shelf off at a time until you complete the entire big task. Instead of tackling an entire room, start with one corner. So, basically, stop looking at the whole overwhelming paralyzing picture and focus on smaller manageable pieces.
Institute a Job Jar
This goes right along with the previous suggestions of breaking things into smaller chunks except this time, you write the smaller chunks onto slips of paper and put them in a jar. For example, write “clean off one book shelf” on a slip of paper, fold it in half and pop it into the jar. Add other smaller chunks, too, like “clean the cobwebs from the corners of a room”, “Empty and clean out one drawer”, “pull 5 things out of the closet you don’t wear anymore,” or whatever works for you.
Mary Lee explained that you pull a slip of paper out of the jar and then you do that specific task – “clean off one book shelf,” for example. Once you complete that specific task, you can put the slip back in the jar (if there is more of the same specific task to do), toss the paper slip if it’s complete, or repeat the task if you’re still into it.
The key is, though, that you do not choose another slip of paper (or take on another project), until you have completed the task on the slip of paper you pulled out. You can repeat that task as many times as you want/need or put the slip of paper back into the jar and pull out another one. If you keep taking small bites of those big overwhelming projects, eventually you’ll get that big project done.
Mary Lee’s ideas really resonated with me so on Sunday night, I decided to tackle a corner of my studio. I started with a pile of fabric on top of an open plastic crate. The fabrics were from several recent projects, so I organized and rehomed them elsewhere. When I finally reached the crate itself, I was happy to see it was half-filled with vintage fabric, blocks, and a quilt in the bottom (these were some of my more recent vintage textile finds and I guess I forgot about them as the crate got buried). I found the matching lid to the crate, tucked more vintage blocks and fabrics inside (I spied these over on top of my cutting table) and closed it up.
Then I moved onto a pile of fabric and totes sitting on top of a cardboard box next to the vintage goody crate. I organized the fabrics and cleaned out the totes, throwing away a bunch of old papers and handouts from quilt classes I taught years ago. Fabrics were then organized into appropriate places, including a box for gifting and another I’ll call my bye bye box.
But I didn’t stop there. Once the pile was gone, I finally had access to a drawer unit I haven’t seen for a while. The top drawer had Halloween and fall fabrics, some old quilt kits from 2008 as well as miscellaneous fabrics. I happily surprised myself by emptying about half of the drawer. Some of the fabrics went into my fabric cubes (organized by color) while the rest went into my bye bye box (or should I say on top of my bye bye box as it’s overfull now).
I still wasn’t quite done yet, so I tackled the bottom drawer, too. That bottom drawer stopped me in my tracks. It was pretty smelly and such from being closed up with no air circulation behind the cardboard box with the totes and fabric on top. Methinks everything in this drawer needs a good washing.
All in all, not too shabby for a couple hours work.
On Monday, I washed and dried all the fabrics from the bottom drawer and spent the evening untangling the big mess from the dryer — talk about strings! After everything was folded, I sorted these fabrics too, some went into my panels cube while others went into color cubes. I found some fun stuff in that bottom drawer — 4 fabrics from a Cranston Elvis Blue Hawaii collection from way back when. Cool! A military panel I designed as a freelance designer for a fabric company a long time ago. There was Christmas fabric, too. What I didn’t love went into my bye bye box (or actually on top of it).
I haven’t gotten back to my corner clean up since Monday, but I plan to start getting my tasks written onto slips of paper and put into my very own Job Jar so I can start tackling the big jobs bit by bit.
I’m thinking about making myself a Reward Jar, too. I’d better not include any trips to the quilt shop to add more fabric, though. LOL! Maybe my Reward Jar will just have chocolate……
Well, that’s it for me this week. Wish me luck as I tackle my clutter one bite at a time.
Until next week –-
Sew. Laugh. Declutter. Repeat.
Always,
Tricia @VRD
Villa Rosa Quilts 
I have been working on a declutter challenge but missed several days of the 30 day challenge and was feeling a little bummed. Read your idea of a “job jar” and just turned the five minute items into some of the jobs. Added fun ones like make two blocks from a current quilt project and go outside for ten minutes. Mostly chores but it will be fun to pull and not know if it is a chore or a reward when I pull that piece of paper. Thank you for this lovely idea!!!!
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Hey Sherri, I LOVE your idea about adding the rewards right into the Job Jar! That makes total sense to me! Thanks for sharing!
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what an inspiration you are! My sewing room really needs it too 🙂
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Thank you sew much for the kind words. Let’s do this together!
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