WHAT ARE BARN QUILTS?

I used to travel to Iowa where my wife’s sister’s family lives and would see a number of barn quilts along the way. Iowa has a lot of Barn Quilt Trails spread throughout the state. From my internet research this is what I have found about barn quilts and their history….and we all know the internet is never wrong.
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From the website www.barnquiltinfo.com came this:

Barn quilts are painted quilt squares-usually fashioned on boards and then mounted on a barn or other building. While cloth quilts are usually made up of a series of squares of the same pattern placed together, a barn quilt is almost always a single square.

In many communities, an organizing group-an arts council, a quilt guild, a 4-H club, or simply a motivated bunch of residents-work together to organize their barn quilts into a trail. Some are guided walks in a downtown area that includes historical buildings. More often, quilt trails take visitors on a drive through the countryside where barn quilts are mounted on farm buildings, on homes, along fences, and sometimes on freestanding posts. A quilt trail may include stops at galleries, farm stands, wineries and other points of interest that make the journey a day-long event.

The pattern for a particular barn quilt may be chosen for myriad reasons. Often the barn quilt is a replica of a painted quilt that resides on the property or honors a loved one. A pattern may be selected because of its name; Corn and Beans is popular among farmers. Sometimes, the barn quilt is simply one whose pattern is appealing to either its creators or its owners.

Here is an excellent link to more information about barn quilts and FAQ's:
www.americanquiltbarns.com/quilt-barn-faqs.
(sorry but you'll have to copy these links to your browser for some reason. Actually, I'm going to list these and other links off to the right soon so you can access them there.)

I would love to see a Barn Quilt Trail in the county of Scott where I live. It would be a lot of work but I think it would be well worth it….maybe someday.