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Alycia's No Soldier Forgotten Project

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The Amazing Melody Johnson's Fibermania Blog

If you don't read The Pioneer Woman you should. She's  hilarious

Suzanne Earley is always up to something fun

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The Beginning

Wow. A blog. Now, why does that scare me? I have written eleventy-seven magazine columns, numerous articles, and more online posts than I can count, but there's just something about a blog that makes writer's block clamp down like that headache you get right after slamming too many gulps from the Mister Misty cup. I'd better get over it fast, or this blog is going to be plenty boring.

I’ll start with the easy stuff. I’m Kim Brunner. I make pretty cool quilts, and excellent adult beverages. If you don’t believe me, just come over and try my Mango Martinis sometime. (You’ll love them. Everybody does. Or at least they say they do, right before they start hiccupping and singing really loud.) For a couple of years, I had a regular column in a machine quilting magazine (Unlimited Possibilities), and had a design column for the first few issues of a new home machine quilting magazine (Machine Quilting Unlimited), but the deadlines got to be too much and life got to be too busy, so I retired. I miss the writing. I never thought I’d be good at it, and I still don’t know if I was or not, but it came easily to me and made me feel creative and content and I miss it now that I’m not doing it any more, so I’ll try my hand at blogging and cross my fingers that it will bring me that same feeling of creative contentment. Good grief, what a run-on sentence that was. It was like it was never going to end, wasn’t it? Yikes.

In between writing columns about my goofy quilting friends (who are still my friends, bless their hearts, and are still goofy, so if you’ve missed hearing about them, rest assured you will hear updates about them here, whether they like it or not.) Okay, where the heck was I? I sort of got away from myself for a minute there. Oh, yeah, here we go; In between writing columns, I traveled all over the country teaching people how to use their quilting machines. It was a wonderful time in my life, and I made a lot of new friends (goofy and otherwise), but after making 14 trips in 16 months and waking up in my own bedroom not knowing where I was, it was time to retire and stay home. I still absolutely love to teach, and in fact feel that it’s what I was meant to do. There is just nothing as satisfying as watching that little light bulb above a student’s head blink on and hearing the student say “Oh! I get it now!” I’ll continue to do classes at the big machine quilting shows as long as they’ll have me, but my days of wandering the countryside are over and done. Nowadays, I am putting my classes on DVD and letting the DVD do the traveling so I can stay home trying to find a new and ingenious way to get my kids to actually clean their rooms. No progress to report on that front, by the way. <sigh>

Currently, believe it or not, I am making quilts and quilting them. Can you stand the shock? I know! It’s amazing to hear of a quilting teacher actually having time to make quilts, isn’t it? Please, try not to faint. I have a couple of Quilts of Valor in the works to help a friend in Colorado who teaches the kids in her local school district to make quilts for the wounded soldiers at Fort Carson, and then she delivers them to the soldiers. She needs to come up with 400 quilts by next May so that every soldier in the unit can have a quilt, so if you are sitting around with nothing to do and want to pitch in and help Alycia, go to her blog and check out the project at http://alyciaquilts.blogspot.com/

Here are pics of my QOV quilts in progress.

The first one is done (yay!) the second one is still on the machine and being quilted, and would be finished if only I hadn’t run smack dab into a ruler and thrown off my machine’s timing, so now I have to re-time the machine and get ‘er done. The third one is still just a top, and I have a sneaking suspicion that it is going to play a starring role in the new feathers DVD I am scheduled to start filming in a couple of weeks, but I haven’t decided for sure. I think it would look quite lovely with feathers twining all around those pinwheels, don’t you?

And now that I have started talking about quilts, all I want to do is go quilt. Good-bye.

*****************************************************************************************

Two days later…

I wasn’t kidding when I said all I want to do is quilt. I re-timed the machine, hit the gas pedal, and finished quilting QOV #2. Now all I have to do is bind it and it’s done. Did I ever tell you how much I hate doing bindings? I really hate doing bindings. If they can put a man on the moon, you’d think they could make a self-binding quilt.

Comments

• 13. Susan (12 August 2008 at 8:47 a.m.)

  Love your blog ... quilts ... and dogs!! I also can't wait to hear about your goofy friends. I'm new to the MQP yahoo group and have been ROFLOL at the antics. Keep up the good work!!

• 12. Linda M (10 August 2008 at 8:16 a.m.)

  Kim, Glad to see the site up and running!! I loved reading your articles in the mags and now I won't miss you so much! I mailed a check for my DVD, so will wait patiently at the mailbox for it! ;) Will check back often!!!

• 11. Gudrun (10 August 2008 at 6:59 a.m.)

  Wow, a web site with a nice big font, no need to squint to focus. (grin) The colours are lovely too, even with incredible run on sentences in the blog, it is fun to read. Wishing you nothing but success in your web presence.

• 10. Ellen Y (09 August 2008 at 11:12 p.m.)

  I've been waiting and kept checking, and was thrilled to see your website is up and running. And floored to see something I had quilted in the gallery. Even though I knew you might use something, I was very pleased to see my stuff with real quilter's stuff. Thanks! I hope I get the chance to sample an adult beverage of yours someday. The group we play poker with once a month all went together and bought the Margaritaville ice shaver and drink blender from Costco. It rocks, and since we hosted last time, we still have it at my house. Yummo. Ellen

• 9. Diana (09 August 2008 at 7:42 p.m.)

  Nice site Kim! I love all the color and the opportunity to see you quilts. I always enjoy your online posts, so look forward to reading your blog. Congrats! Diana

• 8. Pat (09 August 2008 at 4:30 p.m.)

  Wonderful site Kimmy and I look forward to many many visits here. So very happy that you have finally achieved your goal.

• 7. Cecilia (09 August 2008 at 3:44 p.m.)

  Love the DVD! Make more. I have bookmarked this as a favorite. Great looking site.

• 6. Janiece (09 August 2008 at 3:42 p.m.)

  This is wonderful, a place to see Kimmy and her gorgeous work! Your shopping link is making my hands itch to grab the shiny plastic card.

• 5. Marla (09 August 2008 at 2:56 p.m.)

  Great to see your site up...and your blog is great. Now I can get a regular fix of "Kimmy humor"!

• 4. Alycia (09 August 2008 at 2:48 p.m.)

  Look at you! Glad the site is up! And you are back to writing! Awesome!

• 3. Do I have to sign it? (08 August 2008 at 6:56 a.m.)

  As usual, Miss Kimmy rambles on in that humorous way that makes everyone smile. The web site is awesome and I wish you luck on it (which I am sure you won't need) - now that it is finally active! Way to go, Kim!

• 2. Deb (07 August 2008 at 9:02 p.m.)

  Having listened to my sister's "unique ramblings" for my entire life, all I can say is...yeah, she really does make good martinis! Oh, and the website rocks!

• 1. TraceyB (07 August 2008 at 7:23 p.m.)

  Fantastic to see your website LIVE! Will look forward to your unique ramblings on your blog as I've missed them on the lists... cheers from Oz!

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