Weekend Projects!

WOO  HOO!   I finished some weekend projects.  Don't get too excited because they are small projects and were mostly done already.  Still I feel like I made progress so before I go take a nap here is what I did today.

First I finished up on my four heart blocks.  They are all squared up and cut to 12 1/2" so I can mail them off next week.  The left top color is a dark red which is hard to show up in pictures but I'm kind of happy how they turned out.

Then I decided I needed a new tote.  Not a fancy one but one that was super basic and not even lined.  This is the result.  The material is a bit like a canvas so it should last. I put a large pocket at the bottom and then decided it needed to be sewn down the middle more so now I have two pockets.  :)  Like I said, it was all last minute stuff and I didn't measure ANYTHING!  I will get some use out of it though.

Then I went and made a little mug rug from some left over fabric from Ghana.  I had a leaf applique that i was wanting to use and then the Ghana fabric jumped out to say use me.  No, really!  Ummm, well maybe not jumped out but I had a stack of material that was by the leaf and it fell over and the Ghana fabric landed on the leaf.  The ONLY fabric that landed on it.  So yeah, it was ALMOST like it jumped out.  :)

If you look closely you'll see my bad stitching (I did it all by hand) but I do like how the veins in the leaf came out.  Its a little hard to see but that means you don't see so many mistakes, right?  Then I had a little bit too much extra room down in the lower right hand side so I quickly added 2015.  

What have you been working on/  i'm going to take a nap now and then work on some more cross stitch.  Have a great evening/day.

Civil War reproduction fabric quilt coming along

I'm working on some projects and feel pleased that I pulled out a UFO and am making progress on that.  First though I am proud to announce that I have two of my four heart blocks done and that is way ahead of schedule.  I just need to get all four done and mailed by the 16th.  I can breath a little easier knowing that I am half way there.

That led me to pulled out an UFO and see how much I needed to get done on it.  I pulled out the Civil War BOM blocks that I had done from Custom Quilt Kits, Inc.  The blocks are FAR from perfect and I had to quickly sew them together before I decided they should be thrown out.  Thrown out means throw them to somebody else so I don't have to look at them.  Still I kept them and quickly sewed them together.  I was afraid if I waited to do any sashing for the blocks I wouldn't EVER finish them.
I decided to keep them because it is my first pieced project and I've never done those blocks before.  It was a huge step out of my comfort zone.  Then I remembered that I also have some scallops from a Applique of the Month that might look nice.  The scallops even had been done in the same fabric as the BOM fabrics!  What do you think?  Will it look ok?  I'm thinking of just using muslin for my border and will applique the scallops to that.  My main question is should I have a narrow border to frame out the blocks first and then to the scallops or just immediately do the scallop?  Opinions are appreciated.

Perhaps I pulled out the Civil War BOM because a good friend of mine went to the Grand Gulf Historic Tour site (Mississippi) and took the most awesome pictures there.  This one is the frontal view of the USS CAIRO, a Union gunboat ironclad.  it sank in the Yazoo river by a CSA torpedo to the port bow and starboard side rudder mechanism in the Battle of Gulf Bay prior to the Siege of Vicksburg.

Can you imagine being in a battle with that?!

I also got back to my NOEL cross stitch.  It takes me forever to do cross stitch but I did make some progress.  A little each week and it will get done eventually.

It won't be long before I'm starting on the N.  I won't do my green border for the N until after the N is done.  Then it will be easier to make any adjustments.  What do you think?

Have a great day everybody.  I'm off to work.

What I am working on next

I saw this cute heart applique pattern from quiltscapesqs.com the other day and thought I might make some heart blocks.  Instead of them all being one color they will be different colors and the inside swirl will alternate between left and right.  I will admit that makes it easier for me in case I am not paying attention when  draw it out on the fusible web.  So far the colors I have chosen are:

I'm not sure what colors to do next but I will probably be putting them on a white on white background so that will leave me with a lot of choices.  I'm even wondering how it will look if I use a polka dot or something.  Just felt like doing something a little different.  I will trim up the hearts a little bit more.  Make a corner curve a little bit better, etc.

I am also thinking o doing a small mug rug with a leaf for the center pattern.  These are quick and easy to do.  This one will be especially easy since it will take up most of the mug rug.

I think that all the quilting it would need to be done in order to keep your sandwich together would be to do the veins in it and just a quick stitch outlining it on the outside.  That leaf is about 6" from stem to leaf tip so it should be about the right size.

This is my gaming weekend so I'm not sure how much I'll get done before the weekend comes up.  Then I can devote more time to it.  After all check out my polar bear count down til Christmas!  The time will go fast.  :)

I hope everybody has a great evening/day and remember what the Bunny says:

An "O" and the Super Moon

Did everybody get out to see the Supermoon?  Or some call it the Blood Moon?  I went out but it was too foggy on my side of town and couldn't see it.  Luckily my nephew dragged himself out of his sick bed (perhaps not as sick as he let on) and snapped a couple of pictures.  I took the best one and then lightened it up a bit since it was so dark.  What do you think?

I had today off work so I spent most of it on the phone with a friend who had their car break down  and keeping them company while somebody came out to help them.  What does one do when they are on the phone for the LONGEST time?  I picked up my cross stitch and worked on NOEL.  I managed to get the O all done.

Now I need to get to do the green divider next and then work on the N.  Slowly but surely.  The shadows are from behind it which is my laptop monitor.

Everybody have a great day/night.

Keep on stitching!

Zig Zags of LIfe

It's starting to get to be fall and such a lovely time of the year.  Lovely that is until you remember that it also means it is getting closer to the "gift giving" season.  For me this year I only have to give gifts for some close friends since I lost both Mom and Kerm this year.  That's ok.  We had cut down on our gift giving years before but somehow it just seems different.  Not sad but different.

I have two presents all ready to give out so that is a good start.  I am starting to get back into my creative mode again so will be picking up on some quilting again.  For awhile I just wanted to do my cross stitch.  Still want to do it since once I picked it up I remember how much I liked to do it.  I guess the next couple of months, if not longer, will be spent doing cross stitch AND quilting.

First up on quilting will be to do the Chevron block for the Beginner BOM that I'm doing.

I have to do one more section for that block and then finish sewing it.  I have messed it up twice now due to my own stupidity so now I'm taking it slow and easy.  It's not a hard block but it IS one that I have to pay attention to which direction my white blocks are facing to get it right.  It will be finished this week which is good since the new one for October will be out soon.  That will be Clay's Choice which if you are interested can be seen at Quilter's Cache.

http://www.quilterscache.com/C/ClaysChoiceBlock.html

As I was looking through my wall hangings to see what I might want to put up in my office, I ran across one that mom had done in the nursing home and had given me.  I decided it was small enough to just fit between my bulletin board and one of the pictures on the wall.

I think it is great that the nursing home encourages the residents to keep active with crafts like this as well as the regular activities (bingo, etc.).  They are always working on something.

Break time is over so I have to get back to work.  I hope everybody has a great day.

Keep on creating!

Happy Sunday!

It's a Sunday which usually means a non stress day.  It was and it wasn't.  I went over to see my nephew Jason and his family.  That is five children...3 female teenagers and 2 younger males.  It's a "lively" house.  I was there around 4 hours.  I might have thought differently if I had remembered that the Packers and Bears were playing each other.  That too added to the chaos.  It was a typical lively household which is nice to see and be part of at times.  Of course it is also very nice to be back in my quiet apartment later.

Jessica had to work so she left early but Jason was there and we had a good visit complete with him grabbing the youngest (Liam) for a hug.

It was also a semi productive weekend on the craft front.  I made two small mug rugs for fall.  Nothing fancy but something to catch all those treats so my desk doesn't get as messy.

It's a little hard to see but here is more of a close up of the gingerbread man's face.  The Top two French Knots are the eyes and the bottom two are the corners of his mouth with a stitch black line in between them.

I like this one a little better but perhaps it was because I got to use my favorite black swirl cosmic fabric for the back and binding.

I also managed to finish up the star blocks that will go to somebody to put together for the Walter Reed Hospital project.  I have four red stars and four blue stars.  You've seen the plain star on the white background before so I won't post it here.  I think it was a good weekend to get all that stuf done.

Wednesday I will be going out to see my sister in law Bobbie.  I haven't seen her since the Celebration of Life for Kerm.  I might take out my cross stitch when I go out (I have the day off work) and work on it there.  She also cross stitches (and a lot of other crafts).  The current one I am working on is a "Noel" for Christmas.  Notice I did not say "this" Christmas.  I'm so slow on doing projects I'm not sure which Christmas it will be for.  You can work on cross stitch for a long time and it seems like you make little progress.  Here is what I've done so far.

That's about it.  Time to get back to stitching.  I hope everybody else had a good weekend.

Embroidery Weekend

It's been a long month but I think I'm starting to get back into doing some things.  I actually picked up an UFO to work on which is the teapot BOM from a couple of years ago.  I should finish this block this weekend.  

I think I will have a goal of finished up at least one teapot per week.  More on the weekends where I don't game and I can quilt or craft.    The other applique that I wish to do this weekend is two more blocks for the Walter Reed block donation.  I have these four done.

I have two more red blocks fused on and just need to applique.  After that I will do two blue ones and then send them off to the lady who will be putting together the quilts.  It's a simple design and easy to stitch.  That's nice to do in the evenings when I'm brain dead from work.  LOL.

I should be working on the September Beginners BOM this weekend.  Not sure if I'll get to that or not.  It's a Chevron pattern if I remember right but I will have to look and see if I have the right fabrics around to do it.

At least I am getting back into crafting and it feels good.  Now I had better post this before I forget and then wonder I haven't seen anything.

I hope everybody has a great weekend.

Keep stitching!

Can you guess?

Can you guess what I'm going to do with these?

They are small but they started out as rectangles.

Does it help if I show you this?

Did you guess a Dresden Plate?   You are right but I am doing a test block for the latest Missouri Star Quilt Company video called Dresden Plate Squared or something like that.  Basically it is a Dresden Plate that has been cut into a square.  Put sashing around the block and you have it.  MSQC used a layer cake but I had some 5" squares so used them.  Tomorrow I will probably sew them together for the mini block.  It will probably be made into a mug rug.  I will take a picture when it is done.

Speaking of pictures.  The Quilt Pattern Magazine has released the August edition and I tested the pattern called Garden Veggies.  I'm not so much into vegetable fabric but I did find these and liked how it looked.  The center square was blank so I added a charm to it.  It is now hanging up in my office.

Well that's about it except for my cross stitch.  I ended up framing the "Hang in There" picture so that is another Christmas present done.  I will post that probably next week.  It's not center quite right but the person it is going to is quite handy and I will let them try to adjust it if they want.  Then last thing *I* want is me messing up shaving off the center border just to see the "e" a little better.

Well my cross stitch NOEL is calling me again so I will say goodbye for now.  It is still not ready to show you yet since it's just straight lines so far.

Have a great day!

A Discovery...

When I go through things it always seems like I discover other "things".  This time it was going through some things from my brother and I found a couple of items that I thought had been lost.  The first item goes back to late 60s or early 70s I think.  My brother Tony was curious if the Bromeland side of the family had any coat of arms or anything so he paid a place to search it out.  I remembered seeing the shield and what was told to me were unicorn horns on top but after that I never saw it.  I found it while going through some of Kerm's things.  It seems he had given it to his son along with the grandmother clock that mom had.  They always kept it in there.  The other item that I have is the program from when Mother and I went to a luncheon for the King of Norway.  That was in 1975.  My copy of the program is so beat up that it almost is unrecognizable so I am taking the pictures from the one mom had.

I tried to get a pix of the other pages, which I did, but they don't work well in posting them here.  I couldn't blow them up large enough to read the print.  It was the meal and actual program etc.

That led me to getting back into cross stitch after finishing up my "hang in there cat" and that was a journey by itself.  I found an old UFO that I thought would be good to do and pulled it out look at.

It has a unicorn but I would just turn the unicorn into a horse I think.  So I pulled everything out and ...oops.  Nope.  Not going to happen.  Working on 28 count evenweave might have been good 40 years ago but not now.  I still want to do it but will have to see what size Aida cloth I need and then if I can find it.  So I went on to another UFO project.

 I love this one and pulled out the pattern but that is as far as I got.  I will work on finding the Aida cloth for it and enlarging the pattern so that I don't ruin my original which was from a magazine as well as making it larger.  Then on to getting the floss and finding the Aida cloth large enough.  I might actually have some of that but I'll let you all know.

By now I was determined to find a cross stitch project to work on.  I pulled out a couple of more kits that I had dropped and decided I didn't want to do any more so that canvas is set aside to take out the stitches and recycle the canvas into another project.  FINALLY!  I found what I could work on.  It's a Christmas NOEL kit that I had.  So I am happy that I found something but guess what.  I forgot to take a picture of it!  I guess that means you'll have to see it next time around.  LOL.

Until then have a wonderful and safe day.

Remembering.....

As most of you know, my brother Kerm passed away.  This post will take me down memory lane.  So first of all, the obit had this to say about Kerm.

KERMIT P. BROMELAND

Born: September 17, 1942
Died: July 20, 2015

Kermit P. Bromeland, 72, of Sycamore, Illinois, died Monday, July 20, 2015, at Kishwaukee Hospital, DeKalb.

Born September 17, 1942, in Sandwich, the son of Kermit Stanley and Edith (Chamberlain) Bromeland, Kermit married Roberta Madison on April 23, 1966, at First United Methodist Church, DeKalb.

He had worked 39 years at Del Monte. Kermit was a veteran of the US Army, having served during the Vietnam era. Kermit and Roberta were huge supporters of current and retired military personnel. He was widely known as "Mr. Fix-It."

He is survived by his wife, Roberta; son, Matthew (Julie) Bromeland of Sycamore; grandchildren, Madison and Gwen; sister, Bonni Feltz of DeKalb; and many nieces and nephews; along with all of the friends who knew and loved him and relished his sense of humor and joy of life.

He was preceded in death by his parents; brother, Tony; and sister, Pat. 

Now for the rest of the story...

Kermit (or Kurt, Kerm, Kermie) was a great brother.  He was 14 years older than me which made it easy growing up.  I wasn't underfoot and he I don't remember him being in the house except for short periods of time.  Oh I know he had to have been living with us but my memory doesn't go back that far.

I never doubted that Kerm loved me and I know that he knew I loved him.  We weren't the most demonstrative to each other but we knew it.  In fact I introduced him to his wife Bobbie. Here's the story as I remember it.  

Kerm was old enough that he would have been drafted and sent to Vietnam.  The recruiter came out to the house and said if Kerm enlisted he could make sure that Kerm wouldn't go to Vietnam but could go to Germany.  Not sure how that worked but Kerm enlisted and yes, he went to Germany.  Of course we wrote letters to him every week and even sent reel to reel tapes to him.  Later on we learned that he couldn't understand 90% of what he said but he didn't want to tell us that because we might have stopped sending them and even that 10% that he could hear made him feel like he was at home.  I remember the whole family would sit around the large dining room table and take turns telling him what we did that week.  Even Patti and I.  Of course our big events were things like "we found a new stray dog and we named him..." or "I went to the library today", etc.   

One time Patti and I asked him in our letter to him what we could do.  He wrote back saying he would like to have a girlfriend when he got home so we could find him one.  He even gave clues like

She has to be around 6' tall because he was 6'3"

He liked blondes so we had to ask Mom what "blondes" meant.

and she had to have a nice smile and be nice.

Patti and I had a mission.  Keep in mind that we lived in the country outside of a small town.  There weren't any women that seemed to match Kerm's criteria.  One day, while going into DeKalb for weekly errands like laundry and groceries, mom and us girls were in line for groceries.  Patti and I kept staring at the clerk and mom was starting to get mad at us because that was rude.  Mom kept giving us "that look" but we ignored it.  Finally it was our turn to check out and while mom was busy putting groceries up on the belt, I opened up my big mouth and said to the clerk "Wow, You're tall.  How tall are you?"   She laughed and said 6' 1".  Then she smiled and we liked her smile and we asked if her hair could be called blonde.  She laughed and said yes.  By this time Mom was about ready to kill us but the girl said it was ok.  Then the big question.  "Would you like to write to our brother in Germany?  He's in the service and he wants a girlfriend who is tall and pretty and has a nice smile.   Do you want his address?"  Mom was MORTIFIED!  Patti and I were happy.  Bobbie, real name Roberta, gave us her address since we didn't have Kerm's address on us.  I always wondered if mom had it but just didn't want to give it to us since she was so embarrassed.  In the next shipment of letters we sent along Bobbie's address and her and Kerm started to correspond.  The rest, as they say, is history.

They got married and were together ever since.  Here are some pictures which I like.

These pictures are Kerm and Bobbie showing Grandma and Grandpa Chamberlain her engagement ring.  (Notice the quilt being used as a chair cover).

I always thought that Kerm had a James Bond look in this picture. 

Kerm and Bobbie always were cooking out.  This picture is one of the first one that they did. 

That's Kerm in the plaid shirt.  Bobbie did great watermelon bowls!

This picture is much later when he is cooking out at his farm.

The last picture for now is where Kerm, one Christmas at Mom's Senior Citizen Housing was standing next to his Granddaughter Madison.

Madison is all grown up now but I think this is a great picture of them.

R.I.P. Kermit Philip Bromeland

Remember the embroidery floss project?  I made progress on it.  This is what it looks like now.  The fullest box covers 200-699.  I find that I have a free box so I might split that to make more room.  I have a third box for numbers 900 and onward.  I just noticed that I put 700-800 as my label when it needs to be 700-899.  An easy fix but I'd better do it soon or else I'll forget.  LOL.

I need to sign off now and get back to some stitching.  My cat "hang in there" cross stitch is almost done and I hope to finish it this weekend.  I'd have taken a picture of it to show you but my phone camera isn't working for some reason.  My regular camera is at work so next post you'll have a picture.

Everybody have a great day.

Life's Upheavel

Wow, the last two weeks have been so hectic!  It started with a severe allergy attack that, to quote one friend, made my face look like somebody stuffed the Stay Puff Marshmallow man into my cheeks.  This happened the day after my birthday (hello to age 59).  Then, of course, that meant it was all swollen when we had visitors from the Truman State University come visit.  The good news is that after a week of Zyrtec (1 x day) and Benedryl (every 3-4 hours) my face got back to normal (for it).

During that week I had Josephine Hammersley (daughter of my good friend Dan) out for a week.  it turned out to be very good week.

Then the other shoe dropped. My brother, Kerm(Kermit) had a massive heart attack and is in the hospital in the ICU.  It's not looking good so we are just in a holding pattern.  So I'm torn between work and waiting and trying to keep occupied.  What do I do to keep occupied?  I go shopping for new storage boxes for my embroidery floss.  I have three large plastic boxes and bought two more since I've outgrown the three.

So while I was doing laundry this morning, I was winding embroidery floss onto the bobbins.  The bobbins on the right had side are the ones I got done and the gallon size plastic bag on the left is what I have left to do.  Once I have them all wound up, I'll see how I can divide the floss up between the FIVE containers that I have.  All nice and organized for my next project.  Then when I do the project I'll go and pull them out and put them in a small plastic container that will be more portable.

The other things I did was to go to my neighbors garage sale. and picked up a small crock pot.  I wanted a small one so if I wanted to take a hot dip or something to work or buffet then I can use it instead of my monster crock pot.

I put a can of tomatoes next to it for reference so you can see how tall it is.  It was just the right size to try putting in a chicken thigh to see if it works.

IT WORKS!  Just large enough for the chicken thigh and then I made mashed potatoes with the juices from it.

Well time to get some more work done so I'll chat later.

Everybody have a great day/afternoon/night.