Quilt Barn Trail--Part 1

I do not know how many parts there will be, nor when Part 2 will appear.

I used to go barnstorming--taking pictures of barns around our neck of the woods--or also when traveling. I've also been on some quilt shop hops--traveling to several quilt shops in an area during a promotional weekend. (I won't do the one with some 65 shops on the list, but a friend and I did once travel 674 miles in two days to visit 13 rural shops.)

Today we either went quiltbarnstorming, or quilt barn hopping, or maybe barn hopping.

Kittitas County, some miles to the north of us, has developed a quilt barn trail with locations of barns and other properties with a painted quilt block as a feature of their outdoor décor. Wikipedia can give you the history of Quilt Trails. They became popular in Ohio and Kentucky, and the idea has spread to other areas of the country.

We started by downloading and printing the maps from the website and headed out toward Ellensburg through the Yakima Canyon. We thought we would visit the whole trail. We thought wrong.

Here are the barns and buildings we saw in the "Denmark" section, so named because most of them cluster near Denmark Road.

The first that we spotted was this Midnight Garden. It is a block that was unfamiliar to me. I didn't know the blocks would be this large. 

It took us a while to locate this one. It is a Rolling Star.



Snail's Trail is on the side of a home.

The silhouette of a horse is surrounded by Rail Fence blocks and the paddock by rail fences at the riding center.

Matt's Choice

 There are nine sites in the Denmark area, but we saw only five of those blocks so we will be back another day to find the others. The trail is divided into five sections. By the time we had seen just over half the quilt barns in the Denmark section, we had got the hang of finding them.

Here are some of the dozen barns we viewed in the Ellensburg and Kittitas section of the trail. Some were right downtown, and others in the surrounding area. These first three were on the 4-H Barns at the Kittitas County Event Center (Fairgrounds). They also show you some of the weather we encountered.

Log Cabin

Windmill



Carpenter's Wheel



At Olmstead Park we found Star and Windmill. We were puzzled because the map said Basket and-----and just stopped. (Formatting problem.) Apparently there is a Basket block on the other end of the barn.

Courthouse Steps

Diamond Star

Double Windmill

Really--It is a Double Windmill!

Patriotic Star

Downtown we found these three.

Grandmother's Nine Patch Star on the Kittitas County Historic Museum

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Desert Rose on the back of the Land Title Building.

Grandmother's Fans behind the Clymer Museum

These last two were north and east of the town.

 

Galaxy Star with 4 Point Brand.

 

 

 

Carolina Lily

 

We will go out once again, or probably twice, in the next few months for a Sunday afternoon drive to find the rest of the quilt blocks. Although there are some of the blocks that I would not have chosen to make, I am thinking that a barn quilt might be an interesting project to celebrate our tour of the quilt barns.

 

Don't hold me to it.