Barn Quilt Week!

Happy Barn Quilt Week everyone!  I’m sure you’re thinking Barn Quilt week is something happening all over the web or something…but unfortunately, that is not the case.  Barn Quilt Week is just something I came up with because I recently finished painting TWO barn quilts for friends’ barns and I need to share with you all the process.  It should take me about a week to go through all the steps I took.

Three years ago I painted a barn quilt for our orchard.  It still makes me smile every time I see it.

Old Windmill Block

The first Barn Quilt I started with is for a good friend of ours mother’s farm.  The ‘Old Windmill’ is a simple but classic pattern.  The quilt was going to be hung on a classic red barn so I decided to paint it in bold colors – corn white, navy blue and star yellow.   Above was my ‘sketch’ of what I wanted the end results to be.

Both of the 8 x 8 ‘Quilts’ arrived to my back shed already primed with four coats of primer.  All I had to do is draw on my design using a ruler and straight edge and I was ready to get painting.

I always start by painting the lightest color first.  So – first up was ‘corn white’ on the Old Windmill Barn Quilt.  I used frog tape to ensure that my edges were nice and clean.  You can also use the blue painters tape but I’ll show you later in the week why Frog Tape is best if you have it.

Farmer’s Daughter

The second barn quilt – the Farmer’s Daughter – is slightly more complicated.  This one is for neighbors who are farmer’s and have three daughters.  They chose the perfect block!  This barn quilt was going to be hung on a white barn so I went with – navy blue, barnyard green, star yellow and blue feather.

Again – the 8’ x 8’ plywood board came already prepped for me to get started on.  This one was a bit more difficult to sketch out since it’s a 5 x 5 pattern onto an 8 x 8 foot board.  The math is slightly tricky – but luckily my husband is a surveyor so he has an engineering tape which breaks feet down into tenths.  So, I used that to mark a 1.6’ grid onto the barn quilt.  From there I was able to draw the pattern of the ‘Farmer’s Daughter’ block out easily.   If I had to use an inch tape measure it would definitely have been some trickier math.  I taped off my lightest color first – Star Yellow’ and I was ready to get painting.

Stop back tomorrow to see how the first color turned out! 

The view of our property as you pull in the driveway (minus a walking Pip – our children are not allowed on the blacktop during apple season), Barn Quilt to the left.

PS.  The blocks above are the first I made using my new EQ7 program!  SO SO SO Excited to figure it out more!