A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I was working on quilting this quilt, inspired by a door on my barn. It took a long time, but not all this time!  I just needed the weather and schedules to cooperate with me long enough to get pictures, which I finally have.  The finished quilt measures 74″ x 82″.

I got the idea for this quilt about one year ago.  We have a large horse barn (no longer used for horses) on our property that was built in 1923.  It needs a lot of work but we are chipping away at it.  We have replaced the roof so far which was a big step.  And last summer my husband painted one side, and this summer the second side.  I used to take pictures of my quilts on that second side that he just repainted. I loved the texture of the peeling lead paint behind them.  Of course, its best for the barn to be painted, but I wanted to somehow pay tribute to the barn the way it was when we took ownership of it.  The front of the barn is not yet repaired or painted. I based my quilt block design off of the hayloft door in the center and I repeated the design in a four by four grid.

I knew right away that I wanted to use Les Amis by Patty Sloniger Foix Bois for the door panels.  It’s a lovely white with a silver grey fois bois design.  But I struggled to find the right grey solid for sashing. I wasn’t satisfied with Kona Ash so the project just sat for awhile. Then Robert Kaufman came out with Silver Kona!  It was just the color I was looking for so I started working on the quilt again. I added two other shades of grey for added interest, as well as two pops of Kona Wasabi for a little bit of color.  Those were just design elements to make it a more interesting quilt, not based on the barn architecture in anyway.

To achieve the texture of the peeling lead paint, I quilted in 1/4″ straight lines using a silver grey variegated Aurifil thread.  I really like the way the texture worked out and it does in fact remind me of the barn.

I purchased all my Kona at Marmalade Fabrics. When I received the Wasabi, it was just what I was looking for but I realized that nothing in my stash matched it for the quilt back and I didn’t really want to add more grey.

All I had was a half yard of Alison Glass Sunprint Text in Green that worked so I asked Tammy to help me find coordinates. She suggested a number of them from which I chose the Mirror Ball Dot Citron and Center City Los Angeles in Downtown.

I enjoyed making this quilt.  It was fun to find my inspiration in a barn built nearly 100 years ago to create a thoroughly modern quilt design.

If you scroll back up to the first picture, you will see how I will be taking pictures of my quilts on the newly painted barn.  The painter (my husband) has declared it no longer ok to push sewing machine needles into the boards. The flat, horizontal board was already in place.  I am not sure why it was added there, perhaps as a patch?  But we decided to use it and hung eye hooks along it every 10 inches from the center.  I use little clips to attach my quilt to the hooks.  It’s a happy compromise.