NEW June VRD Rose Card Patterns and an Impromptu Road Trip

June 12, 2025June 11, 2025 rosecards2 Comments

Hello Quilty Friends!

Happy Thursday to you!

Guess what day it is, folks!?! It’s the Thursday after the first Friday in June, and you know what that means ………. NEW PATTERNS! Yippee!

Check these beauties out!

Here is the set of 5 monthly patterns for June. Definitely a little something for everyone, don’t you think?

A set of five monthly quilt patterns for June 2025, featuring the names Escalate, Sunita, Limerick, Tomah, and Well Seasoned, with a price of $8.95.

Get all 5 print patterns HERE

Aren’t they lots of fun? Tomah is spot-on for your upcoming July 4th celebration. Escalate makes a BIG bed quilt and uses 1/2 yards. Sunita uses just 3 fabrics! Limerick and Well Seasoned are both fat quarter friendly and make nice throw-sized quilts. Although we offer them as a set of 5, you can get them as individual patterns, both as digital or as print.

Digital patterns HERE

Print patterns HERE

And in case I haven’t said this for a while, there is zero shipping on print patterns in the US (we only offer the digital format internationally). Yep, that’s right – ZERO shipping on print patterns regardless if you purchase 1 or 100!

But wait……there’s more!

I can’t forget this month’s table runner, can I? It’s called Stars & Ribbons and will make a wonderful statement on your July 4th table next month.

A table runner titled 'Stars & Ribbons', featuring a red, white, and blue quilt design, displayed against a backdrop of colorful flowers.

Get your digital pattern HERE or your print pattern HERE

Which pattern are you going to make first???

I was planning to do another tutorial for this week, but life got in the way. Ho hum….. Hopefully I’ll have a new tutorial for you next week.

Instead, let me tell you about my impromptu road trip!

Road Trip

So today I’m on an acquisition road trip with pal Robin and her brother Dan in Robin’s big blue truck. We are heading to Apollo PA, which is in the Pittsburgh area, to pick up a new desk solution for me for my studio/office space.

Currently, my desk is an old sewing table with a wooden top and metal legs. Good and sturdy, but not very ergonomic because it’s a bit too high for short little ol’ me. I’ve been on the lookout for a new desk for a while now, hoping to maybe find an L-shaped desk with at least one file drawer and as much storage as one can possibly cram into a desk to help keep me organized – most of the time my desk looks like an office and quilt store collided. LOL!

Sigh……I have found that if I don’t have a specific place to put something, then I just end up with piles on my horizontal surfaces. My defense – I think paper and fabric multiply like rabbits…….. So because of my tendency towards clutter, I am totally a storage junkie. Can you relate?

I’ve been watching Facebook Marketplace for a gently used desk and the other morning, an intriguing possibility popped up. I’d seen it before, but I didn’t take a closer look then. This time, I stopped and took that closer look and I liked what I saw – a group of Ikea (YAY! LOVE Ikea!) office pieces that could be arranged in lots of different configurations. A tall shelf, 2 desktops, a small desk (which had one of the desk tops on top), 3 drawer units, and a chair. Exactly what I have been looking for, but I didn’t know that I was looking for it until I saw it! Does that make any sense? I really really like the flexibility of the pieces.

A garage space showing a dark brown office desk setup, including a desk, shelving unit, and a chair, with tiles on the floor and natural light coming through a window. — Here are all the desk components.

The pieces looked to be in decent condition; however, there were a few hesitations before I messaged the owner. First, the pieces were dark brown instead of my usual white. I thought about that for a quick second and decided I could accept it because the flexibility made up for the color. Second, and it was a biggie – the pieces would definitely not fit in my cute little red Jeep Compass.

I needed a truck!

I messaged the seller and asked a few questions. She was quick to reply. OK, now what???? I still needed a truck. So, I sent an SOS to my quilty pal, Robin, who just so happens to have a really big blue truck. Yay! Problem solved. ROAD TRIP!

Interior view of a truck while driving on a highway, showing the dashboard, a driver steering, and a passenger on the right. — On the road in Robin’s big blue truck to pick up my new desk and storage! Dan is driving and Robin is navigating. Lucky me! I get to chill in the backseat.

It was around 2 hours to drive to get to the seller’s home in the Apollo area, which turned out to be a lovely farm with horses running in a fenced field right beside the driveway to the house. What a pretty setting it was! I wanted to get a photo of the horses for the blog, but by the time we were all loaded (which seemed to take only minutes with the owner’s husband and Dan teaming up), the horses had all headed to get water further down in the field and I couldn’t see them anymore. Dang it!

A man loading furniture into the back of a blue truck, with a sunny sky and greenery in the background. — Dan took on the important task of arranging the desk pieces in the truck. What a pro – he fit them together just like puzzle pieces and we had room to spare.

Two women smiling for a selfie outdoors with a sunny sky in the background. — Robin and I were the supervisors while Dan and the owner’s husband loaded the truck. Tehehe!

A blue pickup truck loaded with black furniture pieces secured in the bed, parked on a gravel driveway under a sunny sky. — Here’s Robin’s big blue truck all loaded up and ready to head home.

It took longer to come home than it did to get to Apollo because we stopped off for dinner at Eat n’ Park and then to get fuel. Once we made it to my home, we unloaded all the pieces and Dan helped me get them into the space I had carved out in the back of the garage.

A cluttered workspace filled with dark brown Ikea office furniture pieces, including desktops, drawer units, and a chair, ready to be assembled in a studio. — Here’s my desk and storage – I can’t wait until I have space for them in my studio/office.

Of course, before I can set up my new workspace, I have to do a HUGE clean/sort/purge in my studio/office to make room. Not only is it my work area, it’s also the pantry and storage (most of the crates are mine, but not all of them). Luckily, I’ve been cleaning the garage and I have some space to store the pieces until I’m ready for them. Now that the pieces are stashed in the garage, I think that will really motivate me to get the clean up in my space done ASAP so I can arrange my lovely Ikea pieces into a configuration that will work for me.

I am thrilled there are lots of storage drawers with multiple file drawers! That means I will have no excuse for a messy desktop anymore. There is also a wonderful cube storage shelf as part of the desk system. Finally! A place for my books. Piles of books – begone!

I’ve been trying to visualize different configurations, but I know I’ll have to wait until my space is cleared out so I can create my dream office space in my dungeon studio. It will be some time yet before I will be able to get everything just the way I want in my studio/office, so there won’t be any before/after photos right now. Of course, I’ll show it off when I’m all done, so you’ll just have to stay tuned.

A BIG thank you goes out to Dan, Robin, and her big blue truck!

That’s it for me this week. I think I’ll head outside to enjoy a little sunshine now because I think summer has come before spring even had the chance to hang out.

Sew. Laugh. Repeat.

Always,

Tricia @ VRD

Colton’s Point, Maryland — My Quilt Retreat with Cathey and Leslie

August 22, 2024August 21, 2024 rosecards10 Comments

Hello Quilty Friends!

Happy Thursday to you!

As I write this post, I am still in Colton’s Point, Maryland with 2 of my (I want to say oldest here, but I don’t mean ages, I mean the number of years we’ve known each other) quilty pals, Leslie and Cathey.

I must confess that I am having a wonderful time here! Colton’s Point is a very special hidden treasure right on the Potomac River, it’s about 1.5 hours from Washington D.C. and a couple hours from Baltimore. Of course, we’re not here during any festivals or events, so it’s been quiet and peaceful — 2 things I’ve been craving for quite a while now. Too bad Leslie and I are only visiting Cathey and her husband, Bryon for 4 days — 4 days is barely enough time to unzip my suitcase, let alone unwind completely. Then again, not sure I could ever truly unwind completely, even if I tried — I don’t think it’s in my nature. LOL!

It was about a 7 hour drive to get to Colton’s Point from northwestern PA. Of course, Leslie and I do not live in the same area anymore, so we met about halfway in between. My sister, Tracy, kindly drove me to meet Leslie and then we were on our way! I rode shotgun and Leslie drove. I totally could not believe her car was getting 48.3 miles per gallon on average! Wowzer!

Here is Cathey and Bryon’s adorable cottage (it’s bigger than it looks as it is quite deep). It has a wonderful beachy vibe and is very welcoming.

One of the coolest things about their home is that mere steps away from their cottage is Cathey’s lovely quilt studio. This is, of course, where we definitely will be spending A LOT of our time together on our little “quilt retreat.”

Don’t you just love her barn quilt out front??? Cathey brought it all the way from PA when they moved here.

It didn’t take the 3 of us long to settle back into sewing together, although it’s been simply ages since our last quilt retreat experience. We certainly had a lot of catching up to do!

I know I packed too many projects to bring with me, but I wanted to be prepared. And I really wanted to do some free motion quilting — I have way too many unfinished tops, or flimsies, right now — so I brought along 3 table runners and my Whirly Bird top from last week’s summer tutorial to machine quilt. If you missed the Whirly Bird tutorial, you can find it HERE. I also brought a challenge project for the 3 of us — I think I’ll talk more about this project in next week’s post, though — I also brought several quilt kits in case I had time to do any cutting and piecing.

Luckily, Cathey has the same model of machine as I do — a Janome 8900 — so quilting on her machine felt a lot like quilting on my machine, although no 2 machines ever feel quite the same. In fact, Cathey is the person who got me into Janome machines, when she bought her first Janome 6260, it was such a nice machine, I had to get one too. Later she upgraded to a 8900, and so did I.

Here I am sitting on Cathey’s studio front porch, just chilling for a few minutes.

Here is Cathey, working on cutting out some projects.

Here is Leslie working on a second version of a quilt she designed several years ago.

Here is the view from where I am sitting in front of Cathey’s 8900 while I machine quilting Whirly Bird.

I think I’ve mentioned before that Cathey is a quilter/designer and is the owner of Cathey Marie Designs.

And after a long hiatus from quilting when life happened, Leslie is getting back into quilting once again.

And you all know little ol’ me. LOL!

Cathey, Leslie, and I have all designed quilts for magazines, too.

We’ve been trying to figure out when we first met and Leslie thinks it was 2007. Both Leslie and Cathey were relatively new quilters when we met on a bus trip to Chautauqua Institution in New York for Quilting Around Chautauqua. Cathey and I had met in the summer when I was seated behind her on the bus for our local Shop Hop. It was both our first Shop Hop. Those meetings led to many Shop Hops and quilting road trips, along with some quilting retreats (and staying in a cottage at Chautauqua for Quilting Around Chautauqua with our quilty pal, Mary Lee — HEY MARY LEE!) sprinkled in for good measure. But as things happen, life got in the ways and over time we didn’t spend as much time together. How wonderful to spend 4 days together quilting, sewing, catching up, and eating (yep, who can forget eating??).

The Potomac River….and Quilts!

We walked down to the river just to take it in, but we didn’t have a lot of time to soak it all in, as thunder started to rumble in the distance and before we arrived back at the cottage, it had started to rain.

What really amazed me was how wide the Potomac is right here at Colton’s Point! I could barely see the land on the other side of the river (which just so happened to be Virginia). I tried to find out how wide the Potomac was at Colton’s Point but could only find that the widest section was around 11 miles across and that was farther down towards Chesapeake Bay.

Do you see the little island there on the right beyond the pier? That is St. Clements Island, which is where the first settlers to Maryland landed in the 1600’s. Of course, back then the island was something like 10 times larger!

You can find the St. Clement’s Island Museum Campus down near the river. And on the museum grounds is a lovely Little Red Schoolhouse, built in 1820. We were able to go right into the schoolhouse, which is used for school field trips and events. It was like stepping back in time to Little House on the Prairie……

As a former children’s librarian, I was thrilled to see a Little Free Library right outside the Little Red Schoolhouse!

The next day, Bryon kindly shepherded Leslie and I back to the river, this time out on a pier, to witness the sunset. I was a little apprehensive walking out on the boardwalk to the pier, but I really wanted to have a front row seat for the sunset. Mother Nature did not disappoint! Not at all! My, what a sight! We also went to see the sunset again Wednesday night.

Tuesday night’s sunset.

Wednesday night’s sunset.

And on Wednesday afternoon, I wandered back down to the pier for more photos, taking the 2 runners I quilted, Whirly Bird, and the Discovery top I had just completed (stay tuned for a Discovery tutorial next week).

Here is my Whirly Bird quilt from last week’s tutorial! I haven’t added the binding yet, but it still looks beautiful. Being down at the river was really peaceful — I felt like I was the only person in the world for a little while, which really was priceless. I felt like I could really breathe here.

Get your own print Whirly Bird HERE or digital Whirly Bird HERE.

Here are 2 of the 3 table runners I brought with me to machine quilt. The one on the right is Molly’s Amen runner and the runner on the left is a variation of Amen.

You can get your own print Amen HERE or digital Amen HERE.

And here is my Discovery quilt top. I did a couple photos down at the river, but I think the autumn colors looked better on the picket fence in front of Cathey’s cottage.