For decades, I have admired the colorfully painted quilts that adorn country barns on my travels. The hand-painted wood décor is a nod to traditional quilting and can literally be described as an ornate quilt design applied to a barn as an outdoor décor. Quilting the barn became a thing with the help of Donna Sue Groves, as she searched for a way to memorialize her mother. The popularity of barn mulching continued to grow as a means of community bonding (hence hygienic!) and stimulates rural tourism in the United States and Canada. More than 7,000 barn quilts are allocated on quilting trails through private and public properties, and are sought after by specialized travelers. A barn quilt can be anything you want it to be, simple or ornate, but its elements of color, contrast, and symmetry are always prevalent, and visually link it to heirloom quilt art.
From:Emily Fazio Whitney at Local Color Quilts in Buffalo, New York was the brains behind the design I used for this barn quilt. A quilter done with a unique perspective on color, she modernized a traditional star design with a refreshingly bright color palette that would work perfectly in my dark brown stained barn. Matching paint colors to the palette you selected for the design was easy; many paint manufacturers have apps that help you match colors in your photos to paint chips in their respective color line, so I was able to go to the paint store armed with the paint codes for the 18 shades I needed for the design . I only needed to purchase the $3 sample containers for the project, so keep in mind to choose the smaller samples that are sold in the store.
From:Emily Fazio From:Emily Fazio Keep in mind the size of the barn quilt you want to make when selecting your lumber. Many traditional barn quilts are eight foot squares, but the space available in my barn was not that large. I went down so my quilt was built on a 4' x 4' piece of 1/4” plywood base and stepped on 1x8 pine boards. Before I make any cuts, I dry-lay seven of the pine boards and measure them to find that the quilt could be at most a 50" square. I cut all the boards to that length.
From:Emily Fazio From:Emily Fazio From:Emily Fazio From:Emily Fazio Staining is optional, really. It's perfectly awesome to leave the boards natural, as they'll weather over time, and there's also no judgment if you decide to paint the base. I have stained the pine boards in my project, but with enough transparency to allow the grain of the wood to show through. Once the stain has dried, flip the boards over, line them up in a perfect square, and lay the plywood on top of them. Drill 1-1/4” screws through the plywood and into each board, while making sure the boards are not shifting. I put six screws in each board..
If you're applying the stain, don't forget to coat the edges of the boards, as well as any areas of the 4' x 4' base plywood that can be seen.
From:Emily Fazio From:Emily Fazio From:Emily Fazio Following the modern star pattern from Local Color Quilts, I blocked the base of the barn quilt into 16 equal squares. For demonstration purposes here, I used blue tape in the first photo, but you'll just need to make precise marks with a pencil, ruler, and a long straight edge (a 4-foot level is usually my go-to for long straight lines). ).
From:Emily Fazio From:Emily Fazio From:Emily Fazio From:Emily Fazio Painter's tape will be your best friend. The painting process will probably take a couple of days, but it could be done in a day with a little patience. It's very easy to fast-forward early in the project because you can mask painter's tape along the pencil lines in different areas of your design and apply multiple colors at the same time. Towards the end of the project is where I started to slow down:my final spaces were very close, so I had to wait for a color to test before shooting the next section.
Each space will require 2-3 coats of paint, but working outside with nice airflow helps the paint dry quickly.
Emily Fazio
Emily Fazio
From:Emily Fazio From:Emily Fazio From:Emily FazioCertainly one of the most attractive pieces of art I have ever painted! Also one of the heaviest. As a 50” square, the barn quilt easily weighed 50 pounds, and I knew it would be a challenge to install on the side of our barn. You're definitely going to want to put the barn quilt on some poles. I predetermined where to anchor it by drilling from the inside of the barn to the side of my target studs, and then installed a 2x6 board as a barn quilt log for it to sit on while we fastened it onto those studs with 5" bolts. Once I art installed, used two screws at the top and two at the bottom. You can remove the ledger and stand back to admire your beautiful modern barn quilt. (I'm officially obsessed:painting quilts all over things!)
