The Green Barn by the Town Line

The Green Barn is done.

I decided to use the big print because the barn is surrounded by trees, and this print conveys that. Viewers from outside New England ask why our barns are so close to the roads. Gee, I don't know, but I can tell you that New England is small, and the terrain is rarely flat. Barns here often have two levels because they are built on the side of a hill. So it is with this barn. The left side is at ground level,and the right side is not. That light area under the right side of the barn is the lower level foundation. The smaller green below the big leaf print is my attempt to suggest small bushes and shrubs in front of the larger trees behind. You can find a photo of the inspiration barn here.

The block is quite large, 32" tall by 36" wide (about 81cm x 91cm).

Green Barn, On the Ground

I was having a conversation with a friend over the weekend about how you just have to keep trying things to find what works. In the case of the photo above, the big fabric of the leaves on the right, was just too overpowering.

This green background looks better. You can see I'm working out the base of the barn.

Here I've got the bottom part of the barn worked out. It's not sewn to the background yet, but that's coming later. I solved the problem by making the ground NOT in Winter.

The Green Barn, Continued

Last June I was working on this Green Barn, based on a real barn in my town. I hadn't sewn a lot of these pieces together, but when my pal Julie Sefton asked if she could borrow this panel and another for a class is teaching in April, I figured I better get going.

I couldn't find all the green pieces (because, you know, I was cleaning the studio...) so I did the best I could.

This is the inspiration barn, and as you can see it has two levels, with a ramp up to the big door. This picture was taken in winter (duh). So OK, how do I convey that so it makes sense to the viewer? I'm also not sure I want to make a 3-D barn, although that might make more sense

Because this isn't doing anything for me.

Shut The Barn Door!

Oh wait, it already is shut.

This is what I've got for the barn door of the Town Line Green Barn.  Much as I'd like to make these barns a bit smaller, once you set the size of a window, for example, these things grow. This barn might actually be BIGGER than the red one. Oh dear.

Actually this green barn is rather unique in that it is a free standing barn. 

One of the things about barns here in New Hamsphire is how many of them are different colors. I have a yellow and a blue barn on my list of barns I want to make. Both of those are attached to houses.

This isn't the yellow barn I want to make, but it shows you how barns and houses are joined here in New England**. This barn has obviously been converted to living space above and a garage below. This particular kind of attached barn is difficult to interpret in fabric because you have to decide where the barn stops.



** For those who are curious about the distinction between New Hampshire and New England:
New England is the area defined by six US states, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. It is in the northeast part of the US, and comprises an area of 71,992 square miles. Five of the six New England states are among the smallest states in the US. New England is slightly smaller than the state of Washington, but slightly larger than England.

Town Line Green Barn

I'm planning the next barn, but may not get to it for a bit.  It's a barn I drive by every day on my way to work.

It's on the town line, so I'm calling it the Town Line Green Barn. As you can see the top two windows are missing and many of the panes of glass on the row of windows above the barn door are missing also.  I don't know if I will make this another winter barn (because I took the photo in January 2015) or if I will return to take new photos. The road is narrow and there isn't much space to pull over, so it isn't an easy thing to do. 

I also haven't decided if I will make the barn in this "three-quarter" view. I make quilts because I love flat areas of geometric and abstract shapes. I'm not interested in carving a 3-D space in them, which is why I do not (generally) like "pictorial quilts." (Gerald Roy says it's "a misuse of the medium" and I agree with him.)

If I don't know where I'm going, I hold back a bit. I've got a lot going on in the next two weeks, so I'm not in a rush. That doesn't mean I stop thinking. If I decide to sew the barn full-on, I'll need more photos so I can properly place the barn in space. (That's the space where it sits, not outer space.)

But I did start pulling fabrics. I often find it helpful to arrange the fabrics the way they will be placed on the real barn, so I can see how they interact. This selection, or arrangement, is by no means final, as Julie has described in her book, Build-a-Barn.

So I'll ponder this for a while, then I'll start sewing.