Here is a post about something I do when I’m not inspecting.
Barn quilts are usually found in rural areas as decoration on actual barns. The most common size is 8 feet square to be visible from the road. This is done using two sheets of plywood that are 4’ x 8’ put together. I’ve been working on smaller versions. It is an interesting process of problem solving and trial and error. The first two are about 2 feet square made with half inch plywood, with a frame of 1” x 2” boards. They were painted with exterior spray paint since they’re hanging on the outside of our garage. The patterns are simple birds, a Cardinal and a Blue Jay. The home improvement stores sell 2’x4’ plywood project boards, so this reduced the number of cuts. The 1” x 2” boards for the frame can be purchased by the foot.
Here are some things I learned along the way.
I wanted to minimize water entry points, so the frames were constructed using dowels. They were attached to the plywood at the back using three-way corner braces. I then sealed all gaps using exterior caulking.
The pattern was transferred from graph paper to the boards using 1” pegboard. This allowed much more accuracy than trying to measure it out. At first, I drew all the lines using a pencil. Then I learned that the pencil doesn’t erase easily. After that, I just put a dot and used the pattern to see where to tape. The area of color was left exposed and all other areas are covered with masking tape and paper.
Using spray paint takes practice.
It is difficult to keep spray paint from bleeding under the tape. It helps if the surface is as smooth as possible. This means starting with the smoother side of the plywood board and then lots of sanding. It is easy to spray too much, which causes wrinkling. On one of the many YouTube videos I watched, they stressed not mixing types of spray paint. So I started by painting the background white, and then added colors going from lighter to darker. In some cases, the darker color bled out onto the background or a nearby lighter color. Then I had to redo that color.
Overall it was a fun project and I plan to do more of these for family and friends.
Thanks!