Barn Quilts

At my quilt guild's meeting this past Saturday, February 8th, the speaker was Suzi Parron, and her topic was barn quilts. She was a lively, engaging speaker and I became fascinated with her subject. She told of the history of painting quilt blocks on barns and their associated meaning and symbolism. In her talk she showed photos and informed our guild members that many counties all throughout the country have trails allowing travelers to take driving tours featuring collections of these huge painted images, usually 8' x 8'. Suzi Parron is the author of two books, both of which I bought at the AVQ (Amador Valley Quilters) meeting.

I also signed up for the Sunday workshop where participants would paint a 2' x 2' quilt block of their own. I must confess, I rarely sign up for workshops because I do not want to create another UFO. But this workshop promised we would finish within the class time and have a hang-ready product to bring home. It is painted with exterior paint and suitable for outdoor hanging. In my 2020 quilting resolutions (post for 1/24/2020) I vowed to try new crafts and this fit the bill perfectly. Plus it decorates outdoors so I would not be adding to my indoor clutter, which I am working assiduously to reduce. I also recently tried painting mandala rocks as a new craft (post for 1/26/2020) and found I enjoyed the painting medium.

We were given a selection of block patterns from which to choose. Although it is not typical of a quilt block, I chose the Folded Flag in the upper right corner. It never hurts to show a bit of patriotism on the front of your house. Plus this design freed me from the burden of making snap color decisions during the allotted workshop time.

We were taught how to draft our design on a board Suzi had pre-primed. Then we taped off along the lines outside the areas we were going to paint and and colored one area at a time. For the flag, red was the first color to be applied. Those random snippets of green tape designated those spaces not to be painted with the current color.

We used disposable foam brushes, one per color. The red stripes needed three coats! Since I did them first I felt I was falling behind in the class; but I wasn't – not really. Unlike my other blog posts, I have no other in-process photos. I was too busy concentrating on painting away to take them. The star was made with a template but still needed painstaking taping of both the exterior of the star to paint it white, two coats, and equally painstaking re-taping of the interior of the star to paint the surrounding space navy blue, two coats. 

Here I am proudly holding my finished block.

As folks were cleaning up and getting ready to leave I took a few photos at random of some of my workshop buddies. We were pretty varied in our choices for the block pattern and presented a representative sampling. I thought the dashed lines in the basket part of the first photo was creative and added a nice detail. The second photo shows a cardinal. Suzi said that this was the first class she taught that someone had chosen to do the cardinal. She revealed that she has taught this class 399 times! 

After class when I got home I checked Amazon to see if Suzi's books were there. They were but so was some Barn Quilt fabric from Elizabeth's Studio. I love the artistry and quality print from this mill and find my self buying other fabrics from Elizabeth's studio. It is an English company and the artists it employs are marvelous. Other fabrics from Elizabeth's Studio are also in my post from 3/27/2019. This barn quilt fabric is by artist Billy Jacobs from the fabric line Heading' Home. Of course I bought some, 2 yards. I also bought the coordinating panel which measures approximately 24" x 42" with fifteen 7" square blocks. At the February AVQ meeting I had donated a shopping bag full of panels for our upcoming sale extravaganza. Guess I can't resist re-stocking.

Here are two enlargements of the block pictures. I think they are lovely.

Amazon has its clutches in me. When I go for something I go whole hog. I also bought this 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle of – what else– Barn  Quilts!