By Popular Demand, More About the Quilt Barns

In the post below this one, the Shadow Shot Sunday offering, there seemed to be a lot of questions and surprise about the subject matter, Quilt Barns. Here are more facts about Quilt Barns in general and how this whole mess started.

In my Shadow Shot Sunday post, I used a couple of photos I took on a recent trip through the Southeast USA. These shots were of Quilt Barns, a barn where someone has either painted on a quilt pattern, or where the pattern was painted on wood and hung up at the peak of the barn roof.

One of the Quilt Barns I saw in Southeastern Tennessee while on a recent road trip

What amazed me, was that there were so many people who made comments to the effect that they had never seen this before, and also there were those that had never heard of it. I did a little research and found out it is a bit regional. Mostly in the Midwest and Eastern parts of the United States.

As I mentioned in my Shadow Shot post, my friend Mel, who pens the Mel’s Dream blog, has posted photos of Quilt Barns on her site. I’ve seen these before and when I saw so many in Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, I stopped and took a few photos to send to her. I noticed the shadows on the photos I took and decided to include these particular photos for Shadow Shot Sunday, a photo meme that comes from Tracy in Queensland, Australia.

Ironically, when I was in Clarks Hill, SC, the destination and reason for the trip I took in the first place, I had the honor of seeing the Georgia C. Scott Museum there. This small 100 plus year old school house has been transformed into a showcase of the memoirs of Mrs. Scott. More about this and the trip to Clarks Hill to come in the days ahead. Mrs. Scott is the 94 year old Elder, former school teacher and Matriarch of the Clarks Hill community.

But in that museum, Mrs. Scott, whose Grandparents, parents and herself as a child picked cotton, there was a display of quilts and quilt patterns. The story was told about how the pattern that was sewn actually gave out information and was a code used by slaves amongst themselves during the days of the underground railroad.

This excellent site, Owen Sound’s Black History, has a whole section about the Underground Railroad and the use of code in quilt patterns. These pattern messages would be sewn into quilts and hung for others to see and get information about traveling escape routes. When you go to the site, be sure to click on the More about Underground Railroad Quilt Code at the bottom of the page. The actual patterns will be shown and their meaning described.

This symbol is called Britches and indicates the escaping slave needed to dress as a free person

The above picture is the kind is of display Mrs. Scott had in her museum. Samples of the quilt patterns. More irony is that my journey down to Clarks Hill was for the purpose of seeing friends and family of a friend of mine that I had held in my arms as he died on the battlefield in Vietnam in 1969. In a synchronistic way, the family of my friend and I were joined a few years ago. Now, I make the trip yearly to stand with them as they honor Veterans.

In years past, an Ojibwe Spiritual Elder friend of mine from Northern Wisconsin, also a Veteran of the American war in Vietnam, has had me bring down gifts to the Elder Mrs. Scott. One gift was an Eagle feather. The traditional Ojibwe teaching is that the feather represented the Warrior Spirit of my friend and that I have been carrying that spirit with me for so many years. By bringing the Eagle feather to them, I was returning his spirit back to his community.

This year, my friend had a dream. In that dream,  I was to bring a blanket to the community. He chose the blanket. It was a Star Quilt pattern, showing the four directions. The number four represents many things. The four winds or directions, for example, and that the spirits are all around us and come from all directions and in all colors of mankind.

My friend Anthony and I holding up the Star Quilt given to Mrs. Scott for the Clarks Hill community

The blanket itself is given for many reasons. Mainly, I have seen it to honor people or as a gift to honor the dead. The Star Quilt I brought to Clarks Hill was for the whole community to honor the death of one of their own Veteran Warriors, my friend, Frazier T. Dixon. Mrs. Scott, being an Elder and held in high regard of that community, received the quilt on their behalf.

I brought this Star Quilt Blanket down with me to present to the Clarks Hill Community. In my travels I spotted the Quilt Barns and remembered my friend in Iowa and how much she likes the barns. I took photos. Then, in the small museum, I see this display of quilt patterns and how they were used as code in slavery days down South.

A lot of quilt business going down during this entire process. Now, I post a Shadow Shot and find many people interested in finding out more. Well, I did some searching and found page after page of material, (no pun intended), about Quilt Barns. Here are a few sites:


This one is a fantastic blog called Barn Quilts and the American Quilt Trail

Here’s one from Western Iowa

American Quilt Barns has many links to images and trails in over 25 states

And Here is another from Greenfield, Ohio

Anyway, This turned out to be such an interesting and thought provoking subject. And just yesterday, as I was sitting around the house relaxing, my phone rang and it was a reporter from the small town of McCormick, South Carolina. McCormick is a scant 20 miles North of Clarks Hill.

Last time I was in Clarks Hill, this woman did a story about the Veterans Program that Mrs. Scott puts on every year. She wrote about my visit and the importance of getting together and sharing the memory of Frazier Dixon, my friend, who perished in battle in the Republic of Vietnam on December 3, 1969.

Now, she was doing a story about the museum and Mrs. Scott had showed her the quilt I had given to them. The reporter asked me to tell her the meaning of the quilt pattern, the Star Quilt. I tell you, this quilt stuff just doesn’t quit. I might even learn to sew.

By the way, I have  Star Quilt that was given to me. I’ll post a photo of it and tell you about it and the mysterious journey it traveled some other time.

The Star Quilt gifted to me years ago, hanging in my old Westside Warehouse gallery and shop

Peace