A group of women from Loose Creek are working to make Osage County a little more beautiful. 

The four ladies make up the Beautification Committee for the 175th Celebration for the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Loose Creek. The celebration is planned for fall 2020. Joan Backes, Linda Nelson, Vivian Carwile and Cristy Muenks were trying to come up with ways to spruce up the town for the event.

Carwile, a retired art teacher from the St. Joseph Cathedral School in Jefferson City, suggested the group paint and hang barn quilts on some of the area’s buildings.

“I got to thinking, there are so many picturesque places around here and beautiful buildings and when you hang a barn quilt on something it’s like putting on a piece of jewelry,” Carwile said. “It makes the architecture a piece of art.”

At first their idea met with a little resistance from outside the committee.

“I think a lot of it was that people in our area had never heard of it before,” Nelson said. 

So, what is a barn quilt?

 Artists paint a quilt pattern on a piece of wood and the wood is mounted to the outside of a building. If you look around it’s not too hard to spot a few of then that already exist in the county.

The idea was first conceived by Donna Sue Groves in Ohio in 2001. She wanted to do something to pay tribute to her mother. Originally she thought of painting a large quilt on the side of her barn but after consulting with the Ohio Arts Council and several other organizations they decided to paint 20 different blocks and scatter them on barns in a trail through the countryside for people to follow.

That is how the American Quilt Trail movement was started and there are now over 7,000 quilt blocks spread across 48 states and Canada. It is the largest grassroots public art project in the United States.

Suzi Parron, an avid quilter, found one of these quilt trails while she was traveling with her husband and decided to document the barn quilts. She has published two books, “Barn Quilts and the American Quilt Trail Movement” and “Follow the Barn Quilt Trail”.  The books have beautiful pictures as well as information about the artists who painted the quilt blocks and the stories behind the building they hang on. Parron travels the country helping groups start their own quilt trails in their communities.

Backes and Nelson had been thinking about the idea for painting and hanging barn quilts in the area for quite some time. They had seen the barn quilts in Iowa over ten years ago and fell in love with the idea.

“They are meant to be a tribute to the pioneer women across the Midwest,” Nelson said. “We thought of all the women who quilt in our area.”

“And we are one of the few states that have so few of them, “Nelson added.

There are three counties in Missouri that boast of barn quilt trails, Howard, Cooper, and Saline County. These ladies would like to add Osage County to that list. 

There is one prominent barn quilt in Loose Creek on the barn owned by Jim and Bonnie Haslag. 

“I have always been fascinated by that one,” Nelson said. “It’s probably been up for 20 years or so.”

But barn quilts are not just for barns.

“People are taking the smaller ones and putting them on their front porch,” Muenks said.  “So many people who like doing this stuff don’t have barns anymore.”

“Even like an old tin shed, a barn quilt makes it look great,” Carwile said.

The ladies did some research online and read through Parron’s books to come up with a plan on how to get started. 

What they found out is that there are not a lot of rules.

“We are just kinda self-taught,” Carwile said. “Different artists have different ways they do it.”

 Barn quilts come in all shapes and sizes, but the smaller ones are a little easier to deal with.

“Most of them are four foot by four foot,” Muenks said. “I have been making the smaller ones simply because that’s all I have room for, and they are easier to paint.”

“But they can be any size,” Carwile added. “Anything bigger than four foot by four foot gets more difficult to carry.”

The quilt patterns are painted on a variety of different materials but most of them are painted on plywood. 

“We have painted a couple on canvas.” Carwile explained.” But those are for hanging on an enclosed porch where they won’t see the elements.”

The artists use a variety of different paints and different paint colors.

“The important thing is sealing them,” Carwile said. “We put three coats of polyurethane sealer on after we are done painting them.”

The pattern is drawn out on a graph after the plywood has been painted with primer. Carwile’s art background was helpful to the group for the more elaborate patterns.  

But all the ladies insist that it is fun and easy to do.

“Anyone can do this,” Carwile said. “And it’s a lot of fun.”

The group met this winter once a week to work on their barn quilts hoping to sell them at the country store at the Loose Creek Parish Picnic.

The COVID-19 pandemic put a stop to the weekly painting sessions as well as the parish picnic.

The ladies were disappointed when they were not able to sell their pieces at the picnic, but they admit they probably got more of the blocks done with the COVID pandemic since they didn’t have much else to do.

Many of the pieces that the ladies painted were in patriotic colors and patterns since the parish picnic was originally supposed to fall on Flag Day.

Other quilt blocks were made as a special tribute to family members that are long past.

Joan Backes painted a barn quilt to hang on her family’s butcher shop, Backes Poultry in Loose Creek. The poultry processing plant was started by her father-in-law Martin Backes. Her mother-in-law was an avid quilter.

“She made a quilt while he was in World War II called the Irish Chain,”Backes explained.

Backes painted an Irish Chain quilt pattern with the silhouette of a rooster at its center to hang on the building.

“I call it the chicken and the chain,” Backes said with a laugh.

For the farm that she grew up on she painted a different block.

“The block is called “Farmer’s Daughter” and there have been four generations of farmers’ daughters who have owned the farm since 1858,” Backes said.

Nelson painted a sunflower barn quilt for dear friends of hers that live in Iowa. 

“It’s their 50th wedding anniversary this year and they are master gardeners who raise a lot of sunflowers,” Nelson explained. 

Carwile hung a red white and blue barn quilt on the fireworks stand in Loose Creek.

“What could be more perfect for a firework stand?” Carwile asked.

Her mother, Pauline Bescheinen, painted a Dresden Plate pattern.

“It was always one of her favorites,” Carwile said. “She has made a number of quilts with the Dresden pattern so that’s what she decided to paint.”

But not all the barn quilts have deeper meanings; sometimes it is just a pattern or colors that catch your eye.

“If you have something that means something that’s great but if you don’t that’s ok too,” Muenks said.

Mounting them on a larger building can sometimes require extra equipment and a lot of help.

Backes noted that they had to use a bucket truck to put up the barn quilt on the Backes Poultry building.

The group hopes that this idea catches on. 

“We would like to promote it a little bit in our county and in the surrounding towns,” Backes said. “We would be glad to help anybody figure out how to get started. Vivian (Carwile) is an expert.”

Carwile noted that Missouri’s Bicentennial celebration is coming up in 2021 and that barn quilt trails would be an ideal way to add to the beautiful Missouri countryside.

The group would eventually like to create a quilt trail in Osage County that includes county roads and black tops. 

There are many barn quilts that the ladies have added to the town and surrounding areas over the last couple of weeks. They hope that will inspire more people to find their creative side and add a little folk art to their building and property.