Autumn is here

Autumn has finally arrived in Southern New England.  I was busy this month closing up the swimming pool, gathering the lawn furniture, staking them together and covering them with a tarp to protect them from the winter storms.  I just finishing raking the remainder of the fallen leaves, placed them in by the curb for pickup by the town.  Although I enjoy springtime with the signs of growth from the trees, shrubs and spring flowers, to the warm days of summer, swimming, golfing and backyard barbeque's, autumn is also a nice time of the year.
  
My wife and I, along with friends of ours, took a trip, Columbus Day weekend, to Lake George, New York.  The weather was perfect that weekend with sunshine all three days that we were there.  We played golf on the first day and then took a 2 1/2 hour sightseeing cruise on Lake George, the second day.  The colors on the trees were magnificent, showing off their bright oranges, yellows and reds in unique combinations of hues.  What amazed me was the way that the colors blended in with each other and the surrounding buildings with their colors of blues, grays, browns and all the colors in between.  What was surprising to me, was the fact that these combinations seemed to go together and gave me a better understanding and appreciation of color, which would work well with new color combinations for my barn quilts. 

I finished two more barn quilts this month.  The first one is known as Dutchman's Puzzle.  I kept it simple by using just three colors, pewter gray for the background and a dark blue and light blue for the puzzle pieces.  I left this without a border, bringing the puzzle pieces out to the edge.  I think it turn well, if I say so myself.

I wanted to make the second barn quilt more colorful.  I decided to do the Spinning Color Wheel and started researching barn quilt sites and quilting sites for ideas of color use.  I found many color combinations and I finally came up with the color combination that you see here.  On this one I made the outside border 1 inch in brown and continued with an inside border, also 1 inch, in gray.  I also designed four sides of the color wheel to terminate its points to the edge of the board.  I was very pleased with the results.

 

With the completion of the Spinning Color Wheel I have now made 12 barn quilts.  With the days getting shorter and time spent outside lessens, I will now have more time to spend in the basement working on more barn quilts.  I haven't decided which design to work on next.  I know that it won't be long before I have pencil and yard stick in a hand and tracing out another pattern.    



 

My latest creations

I can't believe that it is now October.  Where has the time gone?  We've had a very long stretch of hot and dry weather here in Connecticut over the past summer and now that fall has arrived we are receiving cooler and wetter weather.  Which gives me a good excuse to work inside on barn quilts to add to my collection.  I'm hoping to make a variety of barn quilts and get the opportunity to sell them at craft and/or quilt shows in my area.  
The first one pictured is called 'Whirling Star'.   I wasn't sure if the color combination that I selected would work.  However, after I finished it and took a good long look at my selection of color, I was pleased with the result.   

The next three barn quilts are 1' x 1' in size.  I like to call them 'Door Quilts' as they are intended to be hung on entry doors.  The top one is 'Laced Star'.  The one on the lower left is 'Friendship Star' and the one on the lower right is, what I like to call 'Card Trick Variation' because you see the Friendship Star super-imposed into the Card Trick pattern. 

Now that these barn quilts are done, I'm looking forward to work on the next pattern.  I have two 2' x 2' boards primed and ready.   All I need to do now is make a decision on which pattern I will do next.