Same Pattern, Different Looks – A Quilt Guild Block of the Month (BOM)

June 19, 2025June 18, 2025 rosecardsLeave a comment

Hello Quilty Friends!

Happy Thursday to you!

In a few days, it will be officially summer! This got me thinking about a music lyric: “Summertime and the living is easy” and I decided to find out a little bit about it. So here I go down the rabbit hole for a few minutes. LOL! I discovered the lyric is from the song Summertime from the opera Porgy and Bess by Gershwin which debuted in 1935. It was originally sung by Abbie Mitchel.

I can hear the song in my head, but I’m not sure who sang the version I am most familiar with because apparently, tons of artists have sung it over the years. Yikes! Here is a wonderful version by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. Enjoy!

Here’s to a little “Summertime and the living is easy” for all of us.

I was planning to do a fun summer tutorial for this week, but I have been using my sewing time to work on new July VRD patterns for you instead.

Let’s talk about Block of the Month (BOM) projects, instead.

Have you ever participated in a BOM? Have you finished them? The reason I ask is that over the years, I’ve not only participated, but I’ve organized BOMs and I must admit I haven’t finished all of them.

BOM Fun

Let me tell you about the current BOM I am participating in at my quilt guild, Free Spirit. Our program coordinator, Lauren (a retired quilt shop owner), organized a new BOM for our guild earlier this year. Lauren was inspired by The Civil War Diary Quilt by Rosemary Youngs and The Farmer’s Wife Homestead Medallion book by Laurie Aaron Hird.

Cover of 'The Civil War Diary Quilt' book by Rosemary Youngs, featuring quilt block patterns and an illustration of a woman in historical dress.

Cover of The Farmer's Wife Homestead Medallion Quilt book, featuring a colorful quilt design with intricate patterns and texts related to pioneer woman stories.

Each month, Lauren selects a block from each book. One block is easy and the second block is more advanced. We have the option to make one block each month or both of them.

My favorite part of the BOM is that at our meeting, when Lauren presents the 2 new block each month, someone reads the letter that accompanies each block aloud to the group. As a former children’s librarian, I really LOVE that concept – story time for adults! YAY! Last month, I was the guest reader, which was so lovely as I hadn’t read aloud for a long time. Sure, we all know kiddos enjoy being read too, but so do adults. Maybe you’ll incorporate this idea into one your guild programs.

Each month we bring our completed blocks to the guild meeting and put them up on the wall so everyone can see each other’s blocks. I am always very excited to see everyone’s blocks side by side. It’s really interesting to see how people interpret a block pattern in their own unique way using their own fabrics.

So I thought we’d do the same thing on the blog today. It can be quite inspiring as well as a learning experience to see different people’s versions of the same pattern. I’m going to share with you my blocks, Robin’s blocks, and Mary Lee’s blocks. BIG shout out to Robin and Mary Lee, my quilty pals, who were okay with sharing their blocks with you.

**Block 1: Simple Blessings from The Civil War Diary Quilt (Easy)**

A quilt block featuring a star pattern with dark blue and reddish-brown fabrics, centered around a plain white square.

A quilt block featuring a star pattern with blue and brown fabric, and a central cream square.

Block 2: Sun Rays Quilt from The Farmer’s Wife Homestead Medallion (Advanced)

A patchwork quilt block featuring a central beige square surrounded by star-like green and tan points, arranged in a traditional quilt pattern.

Patchwork quilt block featuring a star design in shades of brown and beige, with a red center.

**Block 3: Bitter Enemy from The Civil War Diary Quilt (Easy)**

Quilt block featuring various triangular and square shapes in a muted color palette, showcasing different fabric textures.

Patchwork quilt block featuring a design with triangles in red and cream against a striped brown background.

**Block 4: Star in the Window from The Farmer’s Wife Homestead Medallion (Advanced)**

A quilt block featuring a star design in the center surrounded by alternating green and red geometric shapes against a beige background.

A colorful patchwork quilt block featuring star and striped patterns in red, yellow, and blue fabrics.

**Block 5: Yankee Papers from The Civil War Diary Quilt (Easy)**

A quilt block featuring a geometric design with brown, cream, and light blue floral fabrics arranged in a diamond pattern.

A quilt block featuring a geometric pattern with brown, gray, and yellow fabrics arranged in a pinwheel design.

**Block 6: Church from The Farmer’s Wife Homestead Medallion (Advanced)**

Quilt block featuring a brown diamond shape in the center, surrounded by a pattern of cream and light yellow squares.

A quilt block featuring a central brown diamond surrounded by patterned squares in red and cream tones.

Unfortunately as of posting, Mary Lee hadn’t made her 7 and 8 blocks yet.

And here’s where things start to get interesting – look what happens with Robin’s and my blocks. Up until now, we were all following the block instructions, but things change with block 7. Robin continues to create her blocks following the instructions, but I begin adapting the blocks so that they blend better with my other blocks.

Block 7: Puss in the Corner from The Farmer’s Wife Homestead Medallion (Easy)

A patchwork quilt block featuring a combination of muted brown, beige, and patterned fabrics arranged in a quilt-like design.

A square quilt block featuring a mix of blue and cream fabric patterns, arranged in a cross design with floral and geometric prints.

**Block 8: Southern Flags and Patriotism from The Civil War Diary Quilt (Advanced)**

A patchwork quilt block featuring a yellow star on a blue background, combined with red and tan striped fabric to represent a stylized American flag.

A quilt block featuring a design of dark blue stars on a cream background, surrounded by a checkered pattern.

Let’s take a look at each person’s group of blocks so far. Now you’ll be able to not only see the color scheme, but also the theme.

Mary Lee is using her stash of Daiwabo fabrics for her blocks to create a classy understated elegance. (Daiwabo fabrics are Japanese taupes.) Although each block has its own group of fabrics, the fabrics are repeated in more than one block for a lovely cohesion.

A collection of six quilt blocks displayed on a fabric background, featuring various designs and colors in muted tones.

Robin is using a great collection of Civil War fat quarters for her blocks to create a traditional 19th century look. I just love how she uses the lighter busy prints as backgrounds, don’t you?

A collection of nine quilt blocks arranged in a grid, featuring various patterns and colors, including stars, stripes, and geometric shapes.

Me, I’m using a big bag of blue and cream scraps with some additional fat quarters to add variety for my blocks. It definitely has a Modern Farmhouse feel going on, I think.

Nine quilt blocks arranged on a fabric background, featuring a variety of blue and cream patterns in traditional quilting designs.

We have 2 more months of blocks in order to complete the set of 12 BOM blocks for the guild. Then it will be time to figure out how we want to lay them out and complete them because how we finish the blocks is completely up to each of us. I have a pretty good idea right now as to what I want to do, but that could change based on the upcoming blocks. I think completed quilt tops using our BOM blocks will be a post coming down the road so you can see how our projects turned out.

I hope you have a lazy crazy living easy summer!

That’s it for me this week, see you next time!

Sew. Laugh. Repeat.

Always,

Tricia @ VRD

Tips and Tricks · villa rosa designs

Getting Organized for 2023 and a VRD Quilt Blog Hop!

December 29, 2022December 28, 2022 rosecards6 Comments

Hello Quilty Friends!

Happy Thursday to you!

Here we are, wrapping up the year 2022. Already. Can you believe it? That’s really hard for me to wrap my head around!

How about you? Are you ready for a whole new year?

Image by Freepik

I used to write New Year’s Resolutions at the end of each year, but like most people, after a couple months, those Resolutions just didn’t resonate with me anymore and I failed more often than I succeeded. And each year, I would repeat the same process with the same results.

Somehow I stumbled onto the idea to write GOALS, not Resolutions.

Aha! Just a different word choice, but the same thing, you might think. But there is a big difference.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, a Resolution is a firm decision to do or not to do something.

A Goal on the other hand is defined as the object of a person’s ambition or effort; an aim or desired result.

Same general idea, but Resolutions and Goals really are different things.

So now I write down a list of Goals for each new year (PSST! I love writing lists! My sister, Tracy, knows this and gave me a list-making journal for Christmas. LOL!). For me, Resolutions just end in failure and why should I set myself up for failure when Goals are a more positive concept — goals in sports, anyone!?! — and feel more attainable to me. I have also discovered that Goals can change or morph into new Goals, they can have multiple components to accomplish, a series of steps to complete in a specific order or not, and I can even — gasp! — add, subtract, or refine Goals throughout the year.

Goals are definitely more valuable to me than Resolutions.

Do you do New Year’s Resolutions or Goals?

One of my biggest Goals every year is to Get Organized. It is certainly an ongoing project for me (as in ongoing for years…). Maybe this is one of yours too?

Something I’ve found out in the last couple years about myself is that keeping a planner/journal/calendar helps me to organize my goals, my thoughts, appointments, tasks, and more. Writing things down helps me to see my progress over time, plan what steps I need to do next, and even to change directions if I need to.

I am such a believer in planners/journals/calendars that — Big Surprise! — I even designed one, which incorporates blank weekly and monthly grids so people can start it whenever it’s convenient AND it’s a Block of the Month project too! Woo-hoo! Talk about multi-tasking — keep yourself organized and make a quilt one block at a time for a whole year!

It’s called the Blue Moon Block of the Month Quilter’s Planner and you can find it HERE.

I guess you could consider my planner my main tool for getting organized. Maybe 2023 will be my best organized year yet!

How do you approach getting organized? I can always use more tips!

Speaking of organization, recently I’ve been seeing some posts on our VRD Facebook pages about organizing Rose Cards. I know we’ve talked about this before — you can revisit the posts HERE and HERE. With over 500 patterns in our catalog with more added every month, we hope to offer some kind of storage option for your Rose Cards in the future.

What would you like to see? What kind of storage options for your Rose Cards would you be interested in? What do you need to keep your Rose Cards organized?

We’ve got a lot of new fun stuff coming in 2023 here at Villa Rosa Designs (not sure if some kind of Rose Card organizational tool will be one of them though) and I’m sew sew excited to tell you about the very first one coming in January — our very first Villa Rosa Designs Blog Hop!

VRD Blog Hop

What’s a Blog Hop? It’s a group of bloggers who write about a specific topic or theme. The participating bloggers write and share their posts during a specific period of time. During the blog hop, people can read the posts each day of the hop and register for prizes. YES! I said prizes! It’s a lot like a quilt shop hop, but you hop from blog to blog instead of store to store.

Our blog hop will be January 19-26, 2023 and we have a great group of participants who will be telling you all about their Fast & Fun VRD projects. We will also be offering a special Blog Hop Rose Card Collection.

Mark your calendars for January 19-26 and stay tuned for more about the Blog Hop next week.

Looking Ahead to 2023

What would you like to see in 2023 at Villa Rosa Designs? Ideas? Products? Are there new types of patterns you’d like to see that we aren’t already creating?

We always welcome your thoughts and feedback. Feel free to leave a comment on this post or email me at tricia@villarosadesigns.com.

Thank you, dear friends, for your support and enthusiasm for Villa Rosa Designs during 2022. We couldn’t do what we do without you and we are looking forward to a New Year filled with exciting new Rose Cards and more.

Stay safe and warm as you celebrate the New Year.

Until next Thursday —

Sew. Laugh. Repeat.

Always,

Tricia @VRD