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A smilebox link for all the quilts made from the same set of blocks.

Block Swap Quilts

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Way better pictures compared to mine!

my own little dear photograph.....

Link >>> Dear Photograph

This is a photo of tractor joe's grandparents. Back in the 1960's, they retired from farming. They built a house in town. As the family grew, grandpa built a huge table for the basement. That is where people ate for large family gatherings. 

They passed away in the 1980's. Their youngest daughter lived with them. She continued having Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings and everyone, or mostly everyone, ate in the basement at the huge table.

Last year Aunt Amanda moved to assisted living. It was decided that the house and contents would be sold in an auction. Saturday was the day. Tractor joe went to the auction while I was up in Blue Earth at the quilt show. This table did not sell. The cousins stood around and wondered what to do with it. They talked about just throwing it away. Tractor joe couldn't see that happening and brought it home. 

When our middle son came over he fell in love with it. He could see his friends gathering around it to play cards and games.  He wondered if it could be refinished. Probably, we thought. I sanded the top yesterday while it was still sitting on our back patio. 

There was also a book of old photos that was destined to be thrown away. Not so fast, and tractor joe brought that home too. In it were pictures of the table and his grandparents.

As I sat and admired how it looked all sanded smooth again, the idea for the dear photograph popped in to my head.

I have all kinds of quilt show photos, but I will save them for another day.

odds and ends.....

My cousin Max has me sucked into the Row by Row Experience. The Winnebago is from The Quilted Forest in Forest City where they make the motorhomes. When they gave me the pattern, I was in a hurry and only half listened to what I was being told about Row by Row.

Then Max was sending me photos of kits she was finding. When I finally investigated and saw done quilts with all the rows, I fell in love with them.

Max has been on road trips collecting them and it has been one for her, one for me. We were looking for fishing/camping themes. There is one way up in northern Minnesota that had the words

Land of sky blue waters.

I ended up just making the words for the quilt.

Then I talked to my cousin Gwen, in New Mexico. she is right across the border from Durango, CO and sent me these two kits....

Now she was sucked in. She had to go up to Idaho and was happily collecting kits and patterns along the way. She has gotten her brother and son involved too. When all is said and done,

I should have two quilts. The out west one and the fishing/camping midwest one.

These are blocks from a win at Block Lotto a LONG time ago. They are finally in a top!

More lotto blocks. Most of these are duds I won at the lotto... and some leftovers from other quilts.

My goal was to get them all up to 12 inch sized blocks. They are a nice stack of blocks now.

More left over sections from last fall and the Bonnie Hunter mystery. My heart still wasn't in it.

There must be another way to use these....

Maybe as a border for baby animals. Still not sure...

Another finished top. I had plans to make more stars, but quickly became bored making them. They are made from 2 1/2 inch strips. The rest of the strips became the border. 

Another top added to the "get quilted" pile.

That is enough for now!