SSOBB Blog Hop - The Henniker Barn

I am delighted to kick off the Free Pieced Barn Project's Blog Hop of members of the SSOBB - the Secret Society of Barn Builders - created by Julie Sefton to test her process notes for her book, Build-A-Barn.

You can see the complete Blog Hop Schedule here.   

When Julie asked if I would build a barn for the Gallery section of her book, Build-a-Barn,  I knew exactly which barn I would represent in fabric.  I didn't quite remember exactly when this barn began to attract my attention, so I had to go back through my photos to find out.

Although I had been a regular customer of Quilted Threads since 2009, it wasn't until November of 2011 when I was pulling out of a parking space at Quilted Threads (located in Henniker NH) that I looked up and saw - really saw - this house across the street. I looked around to make sure nobody was behind me, put the car in park and took this photo. At the time I was interested in the house, as I was in the process of making my Four Seasons quilt which is pictured in Julie's book on page 9.

This is amazing on so many levels. The Four Seasons quilt is the quilt that inspired Julie to make a "house" quilt, except not with houses, with barns.  When she told me, I said, "They're the same basic construction. Go for it." And go she did.

But I digress.

Every time I'd visit Quilted Threads (and they are still my absolute all time favorite quilt shop and the best quilt shop I have ever seen anywhere), I'd check out the house across the street. When Julie visited NH in 2014, we took a trip to QT and Julie, unsurprisingly, took this photo of the barn.

Now, I was involved with Julie's book right from the start. We discussed the whole plan, the concept, the how-to of it, and everything else. When Julie asked if I would be willing to build a barn using her process notes to test them out, I agreed without hesitation.

The Henniker barn had several beautiful elements: the lovely proportions of the barn itself, the graceful cupola with the curved roof topped with the running horse weathervane, the nine birdhouses built into the peak, and the typical New England coloring - white with gray.               

When, a week later after my company's holiday party, I got half a day off and a fifty dollar gift card, I knew just what to do. I drove out to Henniker to take photos of the barn and buy fabric.

I mean, what else would I do? I bought a heavily printed WOW with a strong rectilinear design to use as the siding, some gray and brown fabrics for the roofs, granite and dirt ramp, and some blue for the sky. From my stash I chose a dark blue batik for the windows, and then sewed a quarter inch grid over it with grey thread to indicate the window sashing.

To indicate the separate barn doors, I sewed a thin strip of gray between the two blue doors. Every barn I've seen in New Hampshire has that row of windows above the door, and the doors usually slide open.

The barn has a large dirt ramp to the big front door, supported on either side by huge granite blocks.  When Julie was in NH she couldn't believe the curbstones here are solid granite. "Well," I explained, "the snowplows would destroy them otherwise..."

You really have to think about how you're going to join pieces together when you make a barn, or any building in a setting. I had to add the lone pine tree on the left, under the eaves, before I added the sky fabric. As you can see, I printed a large photo of the real barn to use as reference.

Julie hadn't asked the SSOBB to recreate real barns in fabric, but that's what many of us did. These barns seemed to speak to us, and link us to our heritage and history of the areas where we live.

I had to determine how much of the adjoining house to add on the right and I had to figure out a way to indicate the mass of leafless trees behind the house. I used a Seminole patchwork technique to build them.

The cupola also required a lot of thought. I selected a fabric with letterscript to represent the louvers on the cupola, and as you can see I used four thin strips of fabric to indicate the roofline and the shadow it created on the facade of the barn itself.

 I didn't know how to indicate the birdhouse holes, and considered using these small wire dress hooks, but they didn't look good, so I ended up using an eyelet stitch on my sewing machine.

The finished Henniker barn block.

Chris quilted it beautifully. I sent her photos of the real barn so she could incorporate elements from it: the horizontal siding, the diagonal slats on the barn doors, and the vertical siding on the lower door. She included the breezy winter winds in the sky.

Here you can see that Chris filled in the eyelet holes I made for the birdhouses, and you can see the threadlines to indicate the windowpanes in the traditional nine-over-six windows commonly found throughout houses in New England built at that time.

 I thought I had noticed everything about this barn, but I missed something really interesting.

The barn's west wall is red.

I actually made TWO barns for Julie. I'll tell you about the second one on Wednesday. Stay tuned.

Now the fun begins. I'm having a giveaway of Julie's book, "Build-a-Barn". If you are interested in a copy, leave a comment on THIS POST! I will select a winner at random on Saturday April 30, and announce the winner on Sunday May 1.