Barn Quilt workshop a success

Cedar County Extension hosted the first Barn Quilt workshop on May 25 in the Stockton Community Center. Facilitator Cheryl Sloan began the session by providing a history of how the current barn quilt trend began, and provided books with patterns for participants to choose from. While the patterns may seem daunting, they become manageable when broken down into squares, rectangles and parallelograms. Participants brought primed plywood, and then penciled out their patterns on the plywood.

The next step in the process was to tape and paint sections that were the same color. Sloan provided some tricks that made for clean lines when the tape is removed. Patience while waiting for paint to dry is the most difficult part of the workshop. Most participants did not complete their barn quilt due to the drying time, but were able to take their chosen colors home to complete the barn quilt.

The next workshop date is June 29 with the location to be determined.

Barn quilts are not limited to placement on barns, but are commonly used on homes, garages, and for branding/trademark use by businesses. The goal of the workshops is to have 18-20 barn quilts in each county (Cedar, Vernon and Bates) that will compose a map that can be distributed as a form of agricultural or regional tourism. These maps are common in surrounding states such as Iowa and Kansas. After the June 29 workshop in Cedar County, the next workshops will be conducted in Vernon and then Bates counties.

For more information on the Barn Quilt Project, contact the Cedar County MU Extension Center at 417-276-3313 or by email at ikerdt@missouri.edu.