Are you ready for the upcoming holidays? I certainly am NOT! As of writing this post, I’ve yet to get my tree decorated. My cookies are not baked. And I’m hoping the gifts will magically wrap themselves. And maybe the cleaning fairy will have a little time to stop over during the night and do a tidy up? Funny enough, though, everything seems to get done just in time, even if I have to forgo some sleep to get there. How do you get everything done? Thank you, any tips or ideas would be greatly appreciated.
I’ve got an exciting event coming in January for you!
One of our VRD designers, Catherine @ Running Doe Quilts, is starting another Top A Long in January 2025 and it will go for six months.
Image from runningdoequilts.com
If you plan to make a New Year’s Resolution (or a goal in my case) of busting your scrap stash, you will want to sign up for Catherine’s Top Along, which features some of her VRD Rose Card patterns. It’s a great way to get in some sewing in the New Year, hang out with other quilters in the Facebook group, and use up some of that stash. It’s a win-win-win situation!
This is such a great idea to get us motivated for winter sewing, isn’t it?
I thought about doing a curated list of Holiday patterns for this post, too, but when I looked back, I saw I did that in 2022. Yep, we’ve added a lot of new patterns since then, but instead of doing that topic again so soon, I decided that I wanted to show you ALL 12 of our 12 Quilts of Christmas patterns. You can get the whole collection of 12 print patterns HERE or you can get them individually as either digital or print patterns.
The 12 Quilts of Christmas
Get your Baking Day digital pattern HERE or print pattern HERE
Get your Chili digital pattern HERE or print pattern HERE
Get your Color Mittens digital pattern HERE or print pattern HERE
Get your Dinner Party digital pattern HERE or print pattern HERE
Get your Gerome digital pattern HERE or your print pattern HERE
Get your Gifted digital pattern HERE or print pattern HERE
Get your Gnomie digital pattern HERE or print pattern HERE
Get your Homecoming digital pattern HERE or print pattern HERE
Get your Hot Cocoa digital pattern HERE or print pattern HERE
Get your Into the Trees digital pattern HERE or print pattern HERE
Get your Poinsettia digital pattern HERE or print pattern HERE
Get your Wreathed digital pattern HERE or print pattern HERE
Recently on Facebook, we did the 12 Days of Christmas and offered a kit for each of the patterns, a new one each day. We do have some of the kits still available, but in limited quantities, so get yours now before they’re gone!
So, what are you doing for Thanksgiving? Originally, I was planning to have ham because I’m not wild about turkey. Then, wouldn’t you know it, but my father brought home a turkey — change of plans. Huh. I am hoping to put the turkey in the crock pot, which is so much easier and a lot moister, in my opinion. Hopefully the turkey will actually fit into the crock pot…..fingers crossed!
In the meantime, I want to take a moment and congratulate our 2 winners from the recent blog drawing for 2 sets of our brand new beautiful 12 Quilts of Christmas Rose Card pattern collection.
12 Quilts of Christmas Winners
Throw the confetti! Cue the band!!
Special Congratulations goes out to Heidi from CT and Barb from NE.
Thanks to everyone who commented on your favorite holiday traditions. I so enjoyed reading them and wish I could send each of you a prize……… If you didn’t win, though, it’s not too late to grab your own set of the 12 Quilts of Christmas patterns HERE.
PSST! I’ve been itching to share my recent trip after getting home from Houston earlier this month, but I had already planned to wrap up Quilt Market and Festival for last Thursday’s post, so my trip to Ohio had to wait until this week.
Ohio Amish Country
A few days after I got home from Houston, I asked my Mom what she wanted for her birthday (which at the time was about a week and a half away). She thought about it for a moment and then answered, “I’d like to get away.”
It wasn’t quite the answer I thought I was going to get, but as I knew she hadn’t gone on any vacations since before the Pandemic, I decided to talk to my sister and see if we could figure something out together. So I told my mom, “Okay, let me see what I can do.”
Later that night, I messaged my sister and asked her what she thought about taking our mom on a mini vacation the weekend of her birthday (her birthday was going to be on a Saturday). My sister, Tracy, surprised me and jumped right onboard with my idea.
We tossed around a few places that wouldn’t be too far for us to go for a weekend. I suggested Findley Lake, NY or maybe Berlin, OH. Within a few days, my sister sent me a hotel reservation and our trip was on! For real!
We were off to Millersburg and Berlin Ohio, in the middle of Ohio’s Amish country in five days. Woohoo! I’d been there once on a bus trip and had loved the area, Tracy had driven through there a few times but had never really spent any time there and our Mom had never been there.
We left late Friday afternoon, as my sister had to work. Mom rode shot gun and I was the puppy wrangler in the backseat.
Oh?!? Didn’t I mention it??? We took my pup, Bailly, along on our girls’ week end! It was a three hour or so drive until we got to Millersburg to check into our hotel, the Holiday Inn Express, which was pet friendly. Bailly did very well, considering she usually gets anxious on car rides, even though she really loves to go places. She’s a Shih Tzu — she doesn’t have to make sense.
The next day, Saturday, we were off to explore Berlin, which was only about 6 miles from Millersburg. Our first stop was a coffee shop for my sister as she needed to get her coffee drink to function, LOL!
There was a really cute kids’ metal truck outside the coffee shop. While Tracy went in to get her coffee I.V., I took Bailly for a little walk and we went to check out that little red truck. Anyone that knows me, is probably shaking their heads about now because they know how much I like red trucks.
Then I had the brilliant idea to take a photo of Bailly in the truck. Great idea, but it didn’t work well because she was just too little. Sweet little dear — when you weigh a whopping 12 pounds, everything is pretty much too big for you. So I posed with her and my sister snapped the photo.
After my sister was caffeinated enough, we headed to a couple big buildings with signs that read “Antiques Mall” and “Craft Mall”. Goody, goody. I hope they didn’t have a problem with small little furry girls in shopping carts……
What a shock when we got over to the buildings and there wasn’t a soul there+. We drove around, looking a for another entrance, but both buildings looked abandoned. So, we headed to a cute shop across the road called the Plaid Sheep Company. We figured it was some kind of gift shop, maybe with crafts, and I was hoping perhaps they’d have some wool yarns as my sister did a little knitting now and then.
But guess what????? It was a QUILT SHOP!!!! I sure was surprised as I wasn’t planning to go to any quilt shops (although there are quite a few in the area) because it was my Mom’s weekend and I expected we’d be busy going to antique shops, gift shops, and maybe some second hand shops, too.
Another wonderful surprise was that just as soon as I walked into the shop (about the same time I realized we’d walked into a quilt shop), I spied antique quilt blocks. Yippee! I snapped those blocks up as fast as I could. By then I imagine Mom and Tracy were rolling their eyes at me.
Plaid Sheep Company was a homey delightful shop with loads of finished samples and corresponding patterns, lots of kits, wool fabrics, cotton fabrics, and precuts. There were fun gifty items that kept my Mom occupied. I passed Bailly off to my sister before I dove right in (the shop welcomed my little lady). What fun!
I really enjoyed all of the project samples that each had a number which directed you to a column of patterns where you could find the pattern for the sample. Easy piezy! I was admiring some lovely bags towards the back of the shop and when I turned around the corner of the display, I couldn’t help but stop and stare!
There right in front of me was a nice neat row of 8 Villa Rosa table runner patterns! Hah! My sister and Bailly came around the shelf after me and asked me what I was “cackling” about. All I could do was point. She burst out laughing too and said she was going to go tell the person up at the register that I was with Villa Rosa. Fun, exciting, and embarrassing all at once. LOL!
I finished up my looking and shopping, checked out, and we headed on our way to see what other mischief the four of us could get up to……
After visiting a couple antique shops and stopping by the Guggisberg Cheese Chalet — home of the original Baby Swiss Cheese (Bailly and I stayed in the car while Tracy and Mom went into the cheese shop, but I popped in after they came back to the car).
Earlier in the day, Bailly had discovered how much fun the back window was, especially for people watching. At the Cheese Shop, there was a group of young women who were walking by and they saw Bailly in the window. One of the girls asked the others if they thought the dog was real and then Bailly moved and scared them! Hah! Silly Bailly.
Then we headed back to the hotel to figure out where to eat for Mom’s birthday dinner. I had volunteered to stay in the room with Bailly so Mom and Tracy could go to a nice Amish restaurant and they could just bring me something back. But Mom would have nothing to do with that! She wanted to eat dinner with all her girls, so Tracy and I made a food run down to the Millersburg Hotel and Tavern to grab steaks and seafood. We ended up eating dinner in the dining area of the hotel. Together. That evening, we just hung out in our room and laughed and talked. Bailly was exhausted and she napped. It was a really special day.
On Sunday, after we’d checked out of the hotel, we spent some time exploring Millersburg and found this amazing antique shop in downtown Millersburg, Village Antique Emporium. We were happily surprised to fnd it open on Sunday. It was three stories of antiques and collectibles! OH MY!
Talk about crazy — Tracy and Mom even found this interesting Talon display in the shop.
Which was really quite bizarre as our hometown of Meadville, PA is where the “hookless fastener” was invented and home to the Talon Zipper Company. How strange to travel into another state and find collectibles from your own hometown…….
Then, it was time to head back home. Back to good ol’ Meadville.
What a really fun adventure — a true girl’s weekend, something we’d never done before. I don’t know why. We are already planning to go back to Millersburg and Berlin in the spring and want to spend an extra day there so we can get into even more trouble together.
Well, that’s it for me this week. Save me a piece of pumpkin pie — just make sure it has lots and lots of whipped topping!
Here we all are — my Mom (center) and her girls (Bailly is the small furry one…….)
Sorry for the very long title this week, but we have SEW much to cover! Buckle up and enjoy the ride!
12 Quilts of Christmas
I am super hyped to show off our NEW VRD pattern collection — the 12 Quilts of Christmas!!! We debuted this collection at Quilt Market and Quilt Festival and folks were really excited about it. We’ve been working on this project for quite a while now and it’s so so exciting that it’s finally available. I wanted to show it off last week, but we weren’t quite ready yet.
Let me tell you a little bit about this collection. It includes 12 brand new Rose Card patterns for the holidays from your favorite VRD designers. You can see the individual patterns included in the collection in the image, above.
You will find —
1 set of place mats (Dinner Party), 2 table runners (Color Mittens and Poinsettia), 2 Gnome quilt blocks (Gnomie and Gerome), 1 wall quilt (Chili), 5 larger quilts (Wreathed, Baking Day, Gifted, Into the Trees, and Hot Cocoa), and 1 panel quilt (Homecoming). That’s a great variety of projects which are also classic VRD patterns which means they are fast and fun!
Featured designers in this collection —
Heidi Cook
Molly Cook
Tamara Cook
Melissa Milligan
Orphan Quilt Designs (moi)
Running Doe Quilts
Sewl Sister
Villa Rosa Designs (Pat Fryer)
The wonderful thing about our VRD designers is that we each have our own style and that means you get a super awesome group of projects!
You can order the patterns individually on the VRD website in both print and digital. The 12 Quilts of Christmas collection which includes all 12 new Rose Card patterns is only $14.95 for all 12 patterns! WOW!
Now, how about a GIVEAWAY????
12 Quilts of Christmas Collection Giveaway
To kick off our NEW 12 Quilts of Christmas Collection with a bang, I’m going to give away 2 sets of the collection right here on the VRD blog, Villa Rosa Quilts! Yay!
All you have to do is leave a comment below telling me a favorite holiday tradition.
I apologize, but this giveaway will be for US residents only.
Oh, almost forgot! You have from today, November 14th through Thursday, November 21st to leave a comment. I will select 2 lucky winners randomly on Friday, November 22nd.
Good Luck!
Now let’s look at more quilts from International Quilt Festival.
Quilts from International Quilt Festival in Houston
I think I mentioned last week that there were around 1100 quilts on display at Market and Festival. What a mind-boggling amount of quilts to be displayed under one roof. I don’t know if this was a larger number of quilts than usual, but it was truly awe-inspiring. I must admit the reason I didn’t see every quilt on display was because I actually had quilt overload and had to stop looking at quilts. But I did see most of them and I took lots of photos to share with you.
Many of you already know what a stickler I am for copyright law protection for designers, so I will only show quilts from the show that I also have the documentation for. This is a great tip for anyone who likes to photograph quilts at quilt shows or events — in addition to asking for permission to photograph the quilts, it’s equally important to include documentation with each quilt photograph because down the road, you or someone else might want to know who created or designed the quilt, quilted it, or what pattern the quilter used. Keeping documentation with a quilt helps to protect the rights of the quilt maker. I usually take a photo of the quilt first and then a photo of the information after the quilt and as long as I do this consistently, I can share quilt photos on social media without compromising the quilt maker. In my opinion, one should not just post or repost quilt (or any other art form) without the maker information included.
Take your time and please enjoy the quilts in the slideshows, below. I am not going to introduce each slideshow because the first image of each slideshow tells you the Exhibit along with a description (in most cases).
Just a quick note about Sharyn’s display — the quilts are arranged from right to left instead of the usual left to right. Knowing this will help make sense of the quilt timeline Sharyn created.
Below you’ll find information about the planned Exhibits for 2025. Have you ever thought about submitting a quilt for International Quilt Market and Festival? Maybe 2025 will be your year!
I wanted to share more about Festival, but it’s getting late and I need to wrap things up. So, that’s it for me this week. Stay tuned for next week — I’ll announce our 12 Quilts of Christmas winners and I want to show you some of the fun stuff I found at Market and Festival.
Villa Rosa Quilts 