Barn Raising

This article appeared in today's Journal Sentinel, about an Amish barn raising in Vernon county. A "small" crew of about thirty men built the barn - by hand - in about twelve hours. Some of the detail work, including door frames and the like, still needs to be done, but the barn is basically complete.

Incredible. How long (and at what cost overruns) would it take a conventional contractor to do the same?

Seeing the article naturally triggered the "quilt pattern" response center in my brain. Barn raising is a style of layout for a log cabin quilt, where the squares are laid to form a pattern of concentric on-point squares of light and dark. A picture is worth a thousand words, so -



The picture is courtesy of one of my favorite on-line quilt shops, Big Horn Quilts. Log cabin quilt blocks are easy to make, as well as being one of the most economical as far as fabric usage. All of the strips I cut a few weeks ago will eventually make their way into a log cabin quilt. Incidentally, the log cabin quilt linked to on that post is also a barn raising set; the lines look curvier because the log cabin blocks themselves are purposely off-center.

Speaking of center, the center square of a log cabin block is traditionally red, to symbolize the hearth. Personally, I think it serves more to give a unifying element to a quilt generally made of scraps.