What do quilt patterns on barns mean

The barn quilts are generally chosen from a family's own colorful quilt pattern that has been passed down through the years. Then the family's quilt pattern is turned into public art on their own barn or other building and it becomes part of a quilt trail. Like the superstition of hanging a horseshoe on a barn , the history of the barn star began as an attempt to ward off evil.

German settlers sometimes painted elaborate star images on their barns that eventually came to be known as "hex signs. The concept of barn quilts began with Donna Sue Groves and her wish to honor her mother, Maxine, and her Appalachian heritage by having a painted quilt hung on her barn in Adams County, Ohio. As is often the case, good ideas fall by the wayside when work and other obligations intervene. What is a Dutch hex sign? Hex signs are a form of Pennsylvania Dutch folk art, related to fraktur, found in the Fancy Dutch tradition in Pennsylvania Dutch Country.

Both schools recognize that there are sometimes superstitions associated with certain hex sign themes, and neither ascribes strong magical power to them.

The actual barn quilt movement was the brainchild of Ohio quilter Donna Sue Groves. During her early years, Donna would visit her grandmother in West Virginia and each road trip would turn into a car game. Barns with advertising messages on them were worth more than plain barns, and red barns were worth even more points. But the barns with the hex sign on them were the big point finds. Donna Sue got a job with the Ohio Arts Council. While working with the council, she saw how murals painted on buildings gave the locals a sense of pride and tourists something to talk about.

The murals gave her the idea to follow through on her old mission to paint quilt-type squares on that family tobacco barn. But instead of painting quilt squares on one barn, she decided to paint quilt designs on a bunch of local barns.

The Arts Council thought that was a great idea. Plus the council thought tourists would enjoy the concept, so in , the Adams County Arts Council painted the first quilt square on a local barn. Barn Quilts can be traced back to the start of our country.

It is thought that early European immigrants may have brought the idea with them. Some communities have tweaked the idea to display quilt squares on significant buildings or even create free-standing displays of squares mounted on posts.

Author Parron, who lives outside Atlanta, first encountered a quilt barn when she took a wrong road in Kentucky during a cross-country camping trip in Parron thinks part of the appeal to the sponsoring communities is the chance to create art and display it for everyone to see.

Parron related the story of one woman who created a barn quilt in the Dutch doll design that had special meaning for her mother.

The mother was ill with ovarian cancer, so her daughter positioned the square where she could see it through her window.