By Heather Lusk
Barns represent the heart of Indiana and the heart of a farm family’s life, and a quilt showcasing 92 special barns from each of Indiana’s counties will visit Zionsville in December.
The Indiana Bicentennial Barn Quilt can be seen at Maplelawn Farmstead Dec. 3 and 4, then at the SullivanMunce Cultural Center Dec. 6 through 9. Maplelawn is represented for Boone County and was created by Zionsville resident Susan Conaway, who also made the squares for Dearborn and Ripley counties.
Conaway grew up in Ripley County and used a friend’s barn as inspiration, then quilted her family barn to represent Dearborn County.
“The barns in my life have impacted me,” she said. “Just spending time at Maplelawn, it’s nice that the community can have that experience.”
The quilt will be auctioned March 4, 2017, during a fundraiser at the Indiana Historical Society in Indianapolis. The event will help the Indiana Barn Foundation provide grants to maintain and preserve barns across the state.
“Nobody wants to see barns disappear, but they’re really expensive to maintain,” said Carolyn Kauffman, who founded the Indiana Barn Foundation, the only organization in the state offering grants to barn owners.
“There are people who are interested in the craftsmanship in both (barns and quilts) and preserving something that is valuable and wasn’t thrown together overnight,” Kauffman said. “You don’t see that in a lot of things anymore.”
“The two projects go hand-in-hand,” Kauffman said. “They’re both a more traditional art or craft form for people who are interested in preserving traditional forms of workmanship and craftsmanship.”
The quilt will stop at 50 locations, visiting every region of the state. Posters of the quilt and a commemorative book with a biography of each quilter will be sold during the quilt’s visit to support the Indiana Barn Foundation.
