Barn Quilt Class part 1

Saturday I got to take a barn quilt class up in Lancaster KS. 

Step one was to pick out the pattern you wanted to make. I had three I had wanted to make and it was hard settling on one. 

Next you draw out your design. You were given a drawing of the design and some basic instructions. It wasn't hard once you wrapped your head around it and figured how to divide the board. 

 

Then you tape and paint your first color. 

 

Notice my dark grid lines! I drew more lines than necessary, but that's how I rolled. We were given erasers and had the instructors had their way, I would have erased all the lines I hadn't needed and my notes to myself on colors.  Not how I roll! Of note, if you ever get to do this yourself, draw as faintly as you can. 

 

See my mistake? Even with all my grid marks, I messed up and squared off the ends of two red stripes. I've taped the area that needed to be filled in here and painted them in. 

There were 12 in my class and an intro wasn't given. I think that was in part due to the fact that more than half of the class had already attended another class and this was their second or third quilt. Another thing I learned afterwards is that you really want to press down on the tape edges to make certain paint doesn't bleed under the tape. Having painted enough in my house to have already learned that lesson, I didn't have any trouble, but others did. You also want to paint nice long strokes and per Dede, paint one coat one direction and the second coat the opposite direction. As if you were painting a cross. I didn't paint this way with most of the colors and up close you can tell that, but from a distance you can't. 

 

Starting my second paint color. I painted 4 coats of each color, though some got away with only 3 coats (probably hadn't marked all over their board!). 

 

Third color going on. You can see a little of the instruction graph in the above lower right corner. 

 

Between each coat, we used our hair dryer to dry the paint. You dried extra long after the final coat right before removing the tape. Paint that hadn't dried could peel when the tape was removed. 

 

Fourth color going on. I made a few mistakes. Three actually. All were corrected and you might still be able to see where the corrections were made up close, but not from a distance. 

My third mistake is shown below. See above right of the red center. The white strip is too short. I needed to trim the tape about a quarter of an inch at the bottom. The tape was wider than my strips and had to be trimmed with a razor blade. 

 

Here's my final piece. 

 

The mistakes aren't visiable. I'm very happy with the end results and hope to make some more soon. Stay tuned and I'll show you some pics of the other barn quilts that were made in my class.