Barn Quilts October 13, 2013 Posted by Lorri

Barn quilts are quilt blocks or patterns painted on wood.  Usually they are on a solid piece of wood, and then are mounted onto the side of a barn.  I saw some really pretty ones driving through the Iowa countryside to get some bacon.  Which is another story in itself.

Sherry gave our mom a really nifty book about barn quilts.  So, our mom wants one to put on her barn.  Which we promptly volunteered to paint it for her (and Daddy, of course).  We decided to practice making a few smaller ones first, to work out the kinks.

Here's how it went:

You can purchase pre-cut 2 foot by 2 foot plywood squares at the home improvement center.  I lightly sanded them, and then rolled on three coats for exterior white paint/primer.

After I choose which block I wanted to paint, I used colored pencils to test drive which colors to use.

Quilting grid rulers work really well for marking the lines.  I used a regular pencil for this. 

I used blue painters tape.  There was a little bleed through under the tape despite making sure the tape was adhered. etc.  I think it is because the plywood is not completely smooth.  I decided to live with a little bleed through under the edges of the tape as I figured no one will notice but me.  Probably.  And these blocks will be mounted on buildings outside.

I read on someone else's blog that you should do three coats of each color. I found this to be good advice.  Even though I bought good quality exterior paint/primer, it looked best after the third coat.  Takes awhile though, when you have to wait two to four hours between coats.  

This is actually a different block, but similar.  I found it was easiest to use foam brushes for this project.  Clean up is easy with the foam brushes also.

Two completed barn quilts.  The one on the left is the Sawtooth Star block and is going to Kay's house.  The block on the right is the Variable Star block and is staying in my backyard.

And here it is, on our barn in our backyard.  Ok, it's really a garden shed that looks like a little barn.  I was pretty pleased with how this turned out. We are headed to the farm in a couple of weeks, so we can work on the big barn quilt.  Should be a fun time.