"Barn Quilt Trail"....Omaha, Nebraska

On their way into Blue Ox Factory via highway 81, Pete and Jean noticed lots of barns with a quilt on the side of them. Pete checked it out and shared that it was a project. Jean and I took a walk this morning and we saw three billboard-type quilts, just walking around the Blue Ox campground. So I became more interested in checking this project out. An Ohio woman, Donna Sue Groves, usually is credited with getting the national trend off the drawing board and up onto the barn. She wanted to honor her mother, who was a quilter, and in her work for the Ohio Arts Council, she thought of the idea of a 'barn quilt trail" might bring tourists and community spirit to small towns. The first painted square on 8 by 8 foot plywood went up in Adams County, Ohio in October of 2001. There are now barn quilts in 43 states, a national quilt trail. Pender, Nebraska got on the map in 2010 when the town of almost 1,200 was celebrating its 125th anniversary. Each quilt Block has a name/pattern name. If we had not stopped at Blue Ox in Pender and if Pete and Jean had not taken the different route, I may have never known about the 'barn quilt trail'. I was thrilled to get a comment on this post from Donna Sue. As her comment says, she made contact with Pender and hopes to visit them in the future.

True Blue stands at the Blue Ox factory:

I found on another blogger's blog a collage of quilts across Pender

here are the few pictures that I took this morning. These were in the yards of two different homes across from the campground.

We got to pull out of Pender a bit earlier than expected. We left as soon as we could hook up after Pete and Bruce took a tour of the factory. We traveled 111 miles from Pender to Omaha, Nebraska. A few pictures prior to our departure

on down the road

more corn and soy beans

Omaha, Nebraska

Nebraska...the Cornhusker State

a new sign

near the AFB

planes

the runway

Base lake FAMCAMP  for the night

checking in

our sites for tonight!!!

More later