MONROE - Residents of the Pleasant View Nursing Home just off Wisconsin 81 are helping to make the first barn quilt to be hung as part of the Barn Quilts of Green County project.
The quilts are 8-foot painted replicas of quilt squares.
Barn quilts have been going up on historic barns, corncribs, hog houses and storage buildings all over the 700-mile Great Appalachian Valley region, as well as in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Ontario, Canada.
On Saturday, Pleasant View residents started the task of painting two 4-foot by 8-foot sections of primer-covered plywood with four coats of exterior latex paint. When assembled, the red, green and white whirligig pattern will be mounted on a barn near Pleasant View.
Lorraine Elmer, Florence Marean and Louella McNeill were some of the first residents Saturday morning to wield the paint brushes.
Marean, 94, said her mother and grandmother taught her to quilt, but sewing the little pieces together was left up to them.
"I used to help them with the quilting. We did it by hand," she said.
McNeill, 91, who learned to crochet and still makes doilies, said she never made a quilt.
"Never, ever made a quilt," she said. "But I did a lot of painting and wall-papering. Even in stairwells, those 14-foot long strips of wall paper."
Barn Quilts of Green County, a community service project of the Courthouse Quilters, started with a request from the SmART Growth Communities, and a $1,000 cash donation from UW Home and Community Educators.
Lynn Lokken and Kris Winkler head the project.
"Courthouse Quilters meets monthly at Pleasant View community room. This is a way for us to say thanks for using their room," Lokken said.
Lokken said the residents first voted on a pattern for their barn's quilt at a resident council meeting. Later they were presented with several colored samples of their pattern and chose the one they liked.
Other groups in the county helping to paint quilt squares are 4-H Clubs and the Monticello FFA. Winkler said they hope to involve more members from FFA clubs and other communities and organizations.
"This is an intercounty organization project," Winkler said. "And it's not just this one year. We're looking at several years of this."
Lokken said they have a 20-year agenda to create 50 to 60 barn quilts.
On April 19, the Quilters hope to be hanging four to five barn quilts with the assistance of Alliant Energy volunteers and equipment. Zweifel Construction and 4-H leader Steve Meyer are helping build the 8-foot by 8-foot frames on which the quilts are first mounted.
Another of the first barn quilts will be mounted on the barn of Joe and Lori Schwarzenberger east of Monroe. The "Variable Star," a red square set en pointe in the middle of a blue star, will be up in time for the Green County Dairy Breakfast May 31.
Lokken and Winkler want to have six quilts up by Cheese Days, so that Green County Tourism Committee can begin promoting the "Quilt Loops" tours.
Green County's Tourism Committee is handling the Green County Barn Quilt Web site, marketing and publicity and the "Quilt Loops" drive-it-yourself tour maps.
Lokken said the plan is to have the whole county map eventually filled with marks designating barn quilts.
Barn quilts will highlight the county's ethnic groups, the architectural style and importance of their barns and showcase the evolving tradition of the art of quilting.
"We want tourists to be able to loop through the little villages as they travel around looking at the quilts," she said.
The quilts are 8-foot painted replicas of quilt squares.
Barn quilts have been going up on historic barns, corncribs, hog houses and storage buildings all over the 700-mile Great Appalachian Valley region, as well as in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Ontario, Canada.
On Saturday, Pleasant View residents started the task of painting two 4-foot by 8-foot sections of primer-covered plywood with four coats of exterior latex paint. When assembled, the red, green and white whirligig pattern will be mounted on a barn near Pleasant View.
Lorraine Elmer, Florence Marean and Louella McNeill were some of the first residents Saturday morning to wield the paint brushes.
Marean, 94, said her mother and grandmother taught her to quilt, but sewing the little pieces together was left up to them.
"I used to help them with the quilting. We did it by hand," she said.
McNeill, 91, who learned to crochet and still makes doilies, said she never made a quilt.
"Never, ever made a quilt," she said. "But I did a lot of painting and wall-papering. Even in stairwells, those 14-foot long strips of wall paper."
Barn Quilts of Green County, a community service project of the Courthouse Quilters, started with a request from the SmART Growth Communities, and a $1,000 cash donation from UW Home and Community Educators.
Lynn Lokken and Kris Winkler head the project.
"Courthouse Quilters meets monthly at Pleasant View community room. This is a way for us to say thanks for using their room," Lokken said.
Lokken said the residents first voted on a pattern for their barn's quilt at a resident council meeting. Later they were presented with several colored samples of their pattern and chose the one they liked.
Other groups in the county helping to paint quilt squares are 4-H Clubs and the Monticello FFA. Winkler said they hope to involve more members from FFA clubs and other communities and organizations.
"This is an intercounty organization project," Winkler said. "And it's not just this one year. We're looking at several years of this."
Lokken said they have a 20-year agenda to create 50 to 60 barn quilts.
On April 19, the Quilters hope to be hanging four to five barn quilts with the assistance of Alliant Energy volunteers and equipment. Zweifel Construction and 4-H leader Steve Meyer are helping build the 8-foot by 8-foot frames on which the quilts are first mounted.
Another of the first barn quilts will be mounted on the barn of Joe and Lori Schwarzenberger east of Monroe. The "Variable Star," a red square set en pointe in the middle of a blue star, will be up in time for the Green County Dairy Breakfast May 31.
Lokken and Winkler want to have six quilts up by Cheese Days, so that Green County Tourism Committee can begin promoting the "Quilt Loops" tours.
Green County's Tourism Committee is handling the Green County Barn Quilt Web site, marketing and publicity and the "Quilt Loops" drive-it-yourself tour maps.
Lokken said the plan is to have the whole county map eventually filled with marks designating barn quilts.
Barn quilts will highlight the county's ethnic groups, the architectural style and importance of their barns and showcase the evolving tradition of the art of quilting.
"We want tourists to be able to loop through the little villages as they travel around looking at the quilts," she said.