Summer Travel

Quick trip across mid America flat land. 

Kansas Windmills at Work

Yes, I am talking about Kansas. I got some inspiration for a new quilt while traveling through the wind farms between Russell and Hays. There was one place along the way where cattle were cooling themselves in a field near an old fashioned rusty windmill. Beyond the cattle on a higher hill one of the large white windmills towered over the scene. Even further away and on even higher ground there were more large windmills clustered near the ridge of the hill. They looked smaller because they were so far away. Each layer of land was a a different color, green in the field, yellow ocher near the tall windmill and yellow-gold at the next hill. There was not any real place to pull over to get a photograph so I took mental notes about how the windmill shadows fell on the tower, what the clouds looked like and how interesting it was to see the different generations of windmills side by side. 

A little bit later I pulled off at an exit to take a picture of one of the windmills up close.  From the highway they seem to tower silently in groups. When you stand near them there is a whooooosh sound as the large blades slice through the air. On one side of the road there was one lonely windmill and on the other there were several much further away.  When you drive through at night they all have red lights that blink together to alert planes in the area of their presence. 

Kansas Wind Farms

When I got to Colby I stopped at Quilt Cabin. They have their fabrics grouped in color themes. There is a whole section for the Wizard of Oz with poppies, windmills, and other prints that could be used together. They had many patterns, specialty rulers, sewing machines, layer cakes, jelly rolls, honey buns, and charm packs. The color themes have names like Harvest, which is the brown, yellow, gold and orange colors or grasses, which is an assortment of greens. There are also themes for sky, clouds, water. I looked for their web site which I could not find but they do have a facebook page.