How do quilts, a handmade bedcover, and barns, a large building for
cows, go together? Answer—when a barn sports a quilted decoration.
It’s a natural for the place where I live, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania—the home of Amish quilts, dairy farms, fields of hay and corn. But we are sort of a Johnny-come-lately. Quilt trails are found in 48 states and Canada. A local quilting farm woman saw her first barn quilt in Ohio which inspired the one profiled in our local newspaper.
Some 7,000 wooden or Mylar quilts were created by groups such as the Grange (a farming organization I belonged to as a teenage farm girl). They can be found following quilt trails, and they aren’t all on barns.
Here is the article from our local newspaper. And, of course, something so popular has its own Facebook page.
I had never before heard of quilts on barns, or quilt trails. In the summer, we have corn mazes, tours of dairy farms, and Hershey candy factory. Do you have similar activities where you live? I’d love to hear about them.
We don’t have anything like that in any of the places I have lived. It’s fascinating and now you’ve made me put something new on my bucket list. I want to do a quilt trail. I do remember hex signs on barns when I was growing up, and I remember barn roof advertising, but never quilts.
Kait, I’ve seen the hex signs, but not for a while, and, growing up, barn advertisements. (Chewing tobacco, not much of that around now either.)
Norma, love this! I quilt (well, I used to quilt more before getting caught up in writing) and Amish-style quilts are among my favorites. In Tennessee, they used to use barns to advertise (mostly things like “See Rock City!”), and I remember the old hex signs on Pennsylvania barns from years ago. Thank you for posting!
Norma, I absolutely love old barns. I also like quilts. I have a few quilts that my mom and grandmother made. Years ago, I became interested in barns and got information about them from different parts of the country. It was fascinating! Arkansas (where I live) and Oklahoma have some lovely very old barns but I’ve heard that Pennsylvania has fascinating barns too. I’ve noticed that when barn owners keep the roofs repaired, the barns last for many decades. I hate to see an old barn crumble.
http://pen‑l.com/Mystery.html
http://www.amazon.com/Blanche-Day-Manos/e/B0090018EI/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0
I remember, some 60 or 70 years ago, when my father converted his barn to a milking parlor—all the rage then. (The old barn was close to falling down, as I remember.)