North Iowa Tractor Ride 2010...day one

We finished our first tractor ride!!

these are the cell phone pictures that I took.....

We were only gone 48 hours....But I feel like we were gone for days and days and went a lot further than we did. Here we have Brian, tractor joe, Rod and Bill.... We all met in Cresco, IA on Thursday. It ended up with 170-something tractors participating. They had 4 sections.....from the slowest group, which always left first... to the fastest group, which always left last. We were in the fastest group.

Hang on to your hats....I lost my hat once when a gust of wind took it. Bill stopped to pick it up.
I got it back when we stopped for a minute to check our brakes on the tractor...
they were smokin' hot!!!

I am still not sure of the problem...but it was easily fixed. We discovered that we would like one of the slower groups better. The faster you go, the louder the tractor. It was hard to talk without yelling at each other.

we said "WHAT?" a lot....and did a lot of pointing. At a slower pace it was easier to talk.

On the first day we were in front of Bill and Rod. It was hard taking pictures. There was lots of bouncing in my seat.

I had the cooler, my backpack and me all seatbelted down on the bench. There were times I was airborn back there. The first time it was OMG!!!....then you just kinda get used to it happening every once in awhile.

We left at 9:00 am and arrived in Lanesboro, Mn about 3:30 in the afternoon. It was very hot and humid...waiting in line for fuel was another chance for more sweating. Not much wind to help cool a person off.
Out on the road you didn't feel the heat as much.

I had put a quilt on the back of the bench.

Then we had to find the place we had made reservations for...



It took a bit of searching...finally we found the door sandwiched between two shops.

Check in was at the Amish Experience shop.



Then off to our room....

Right behind that door is a set of steps...24 of them and right at the top was our room. I kept reminding myself of all the great exercise I was getting each time I went up them.


There were 3 rooms, each with a bed and bathroom. The rooms all shared a livingroom area and one beautiful kitchen.

It was stocked with everything you would need to make breakfast. We loved it. Our roomies were Rod's in-laws and we all ate together at the table, talking about the ride so far.

Just about all the decorations were for sale...there were price tags hanging on different things, including these chairs. Amish built, they had $169.00 on them. I don't know if that was per chair or pair of them...we didn't buy anything, not even a postcard.

I will do day two next time!!

oliver ready....

We are going on a tractor ride....

It goes from Cresco, IA up to Lanesboro, MN and back

We spend the night in Lanesboro.

...there will be 150 tractors of all kinds...... putt*puttin along the road.

We have never done this before.

Rod has.

He put an old pickup bench on the back of the Oliver. That is where I will be sitting...just like Rod is in the picture.

(Tractor joe took the picture while he and Rod were working on it.

It is blurry, but he was so excited for me to see it. I told him that people will think he was drinking when he took it. He assured me it was after he took the picture that they had a beer.) The kitty's name is Cleo.

all penguins.....

...and nothing but penguins....

I have 12 blocks sewn. Now the big question is how to lay them out in a baby quilt. I took them outside to lay them out on the driveway this morning. It was cloudy and not to breezy yet.
I tried different things.



How 'bout dancing penguins?
Setting them in wonky to make a bigger square.
Or,
laid out with a mystery block between them.
I have no idea what that mystery block would be.

Or just side by side,

with some sashing separating each row....and some cute fabric for the border...

Or,

I went in to get my disappearing nine patches
This gets rather busy, and then I am down to one quilt instead of two baby quilts.

There isn't much left of the penguin background fabric...so I can't plan on using that.

I will put these in a baggy and bring them with me shopping next time I go.

A deep aqua would look good with the light aqua in each block. If Karen is with me, there is good chance there will be red in it too.

Go ahead and put your 2 cents in here. Someone might throw something out there that actually sticks....

penguins...

I am getting there....
8 done so far. There are 3 dark blue, 3 dark purple and 2 black ones.

The last 4 will be black ones. 12 all together. I haven't decided how to finish them though.

I didn't really like the setting that is in the magazine. Something else to think about.....

baby boys, blocks and blogging....

I was cleaning off my sewing desk...the one with my old machine on it

and I found a magazine....

It was a "special" issue from Quiltmakers in 2007.

So of course, I paged through it.

Wow, look..... a perfect block for a baby boy quilt.

I should have enough fabric to make a version of this.....

(there are no baby boys born yet, but it's nice to plan ahead sometimes.)

but "finish line" will go on hold for now because...

I continued to page through and came upon Penguin Party...

I had even made one block many moons ago.

I dug that out.....

This could be a boy or a girl quilt....I have several more black fabrics now and even some orange for feet and beaks. The directions call for some of the birds to be very deep dark blues and purples. I don't know if that will happen or not. It would make it a tad more colorful. I'll do a few and see if it starts singing to me or not.

Next up is a block I made using fabrics from a charm pack called "fruitcake"....

...while it is a good way to use every square inch of fabric from the 5 inch square,

it didn't sing to me when I finished it.

I find myself wanting to go back to the "electric fan" block. I piled up all the fabric and put it back on the shelf for now. It will have to rest there for a while.

One night this week, Karen called to say....no wait, I called her....anyway...

she told me she was working on finishing up some small "disappearing nine patches"

that would be hot pads.

She made them with 3 inch squares and they were so cute.....

So I had to try it...

I made one using 2 1/2 inch squares with some fabric that was just laying there.

I tried some fancy stitches on the binding and thought it looked stupid.

This little hot pad is now in my hot pad drawer.

Now here is the big news....

Karen told me she set up a blog this week, but hadn't posted anything yet.

This morning she called to say her blog is up and running with her version of

"disappearing nine patch" blocks turned into hot pads.

here is the link to....smalltownquilter

disappearing 9 patch

I put the charm pack called "make life" to use today.
There wasn't quite enough for 6 disappearing 9 patches so I had to add a few of my own fabrics.
They were all sewn together....6 nine patches.

Next step, cut them all up again.

Down the middle one way, then down the middle the other way.

Then the magic...

Presto.....

Chango....you are now entirely new blocks!!

These will go in a baby quilt.
Which baby hasn't been determined yet. Because of the flowers I think it should go to a girl.... this will be the second girl quilt I have made. Hopefully some of the baby's that are due will be girls!

cutting and pasting....

I was hired years ago to be Trevor's personal historian by his Mom. She saved everything that came his way. So I try to use it all on the pages.
I think I am about 1/2 done with the last of his senior year. I got as far as possible last year when he graduated. It is time to get it all done now.
and that is what I will be doing for a little while yet...
cutting and pasting