Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Quilt Barn(s) and the American Barn Quilt Trail

Quilt barn near Piqua, OH, 2011.
While in Ohio last weekend, I learned from my teammate Erin about the rural American known as the Quilt Barn project. I'm just learning about this, but it seems like the ultimate retiree hobby and a good way for rural communities to draw enthusiasts of American settler history off the beaten Interstate path. I'm drawn to it because of my love for barns as advertising media. This is even better than that, since it's community-based, not corporate-based.

I'm just learning about this project -- I don't have much info to date, but will supply a link (updated July 2014).
 
(The previously linked site, no longer active, featured a poll. I took it and learned that only one lucky visitor has seen over 150 quilt barns.) 

It seems they lack a page for Miami County, Ohio, so I'll submit this and see if they can use it. We stopped on the highway on our way to Versailles, Ohio. The Denver Omelettes returned to compete in the 30th annual Poultry Days ultimate frisbee tournament; it was about my 12th time back.

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4 comments:

  1. ErinJune 21, 2011 at 5:50 PM

    Teammate Erin here. I was just thinking about this again the other day -- I am pretty unimpressed with the data that the various quilt barn websites have, it would be cool to have one place to see where all the quilt barn "trails" are in the US. Or, since I am very recently a smartphone owner, to create a quilt barn app for people to locate them with gps.

    Sadly my grandma's quilt block is not up on their barn yet, since my various family members apparently couldn't agree on what side of the barn to put it on. We'll try to get that taken care of so I can send a picture.

    Here's the pic I took of the same barn a year ago. Not much has changed:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/erinherzog/4704686345/in/photostream

    And a pic of Ohio farmland from the trip this year, instagram-style:

    http://instagr.am/p/FgeAs/

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  2. PhillipsSSFJune 21, 2011 at 6:15 PM

    Instagram is pretty sweet. I hadn't seen that.

    Yeah, looks like they added a red car in addition to the blue pickup in your shot. The corn was also higher last year, well on its way to being "knee high by the Fourth of July," as the saying goes.

    A quilt barn app would be the perfect union of rustic with cutting edge. Yes, we need more technology applied to barns!

    I hope your family decides soon. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in that debate.

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  3. ErinJune 22, 2011 at 12:12 PM

    8 followers, count it!

    ReplyDelete
  4. PhillipsSSFAugust 8, 2011 at 6:25 PM

    http://conta.cc/n7J8eE

    This just in: the restoration company I worked for in Illinois just put a Quilt up on the barn at their Wisconsin office! Props, TGR!!

    ReplyDelete

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