I knew, after taking my first Fusion Paint Barn Quilt Class at Annie’s Quilt shop, that I wanted to make another one. I got my chance recently, and my buddy, Gail, was able to join me this time. Since we both made the Carpenter’s Star before, we each chose a different block in different colours from our first one. Gail decided to make the Double Aster block (option #3 on the website) in a mix of grey-blues and I decided on the Woven Star (option #2 on the website) in my usual funky brights. The first one I made was quite a bit more subdued because I wanted it to blend in with the colours in my home, but this one was done to display in my sewing room where I love a lot of wild colours.

After seeing what the other ladies did with their barn quilts in terms of colour after my last class, I had major colour envy and wanted to do another one, but this time in my usual brights. The fusion paints are a little more subdued than regular acrylic paints so, with instructor Ashley’s guidance, some extra mixing with the paints was necessary to get the hues I was looking for. I haven’t mixed paint since one of my college art classes so this was definitely a stroll down memory lane.

I knew I wanted to use teal or turquoise, lime green and purple (my usual fave cool colours), but it also needed something a little warmer, so hot pink and yellow-orange were added. You’ll notice in the photos below that I had a lot more orange in the block near the beginning, but it didn’t look quite right to me. After adding the hot pink I found that the orange was too overwhelming, so I taped off a section of the orange near the centre and changed it to hot pink leaving just 4 triangles of orange and that made all the difference. I absolutely love the green around the perimeter.

There was an awful lot of taping in between colours so that’s the green painter’s tape you see around each section. In the first photo some of the tape has already been removed and you can see how crisp the lines are. Ashley told us it was necessary to rub the tape over and over again near the penciled lines in order to get nice crisp lines once the painting in that section was complete and the tape was removed. Ashley recommends getting a high quality painter’s tape like Frog Tape because the cheaper tape just doesn’t give a crisp enough line and there can be some bleeding so it’s worth the extra money. There were only a couple of spots on mine where it wasn’t spot on, but that was where I changed the orange to pink so it wasn’t that obvious.

As you can see from the photo below, the class was a huge success. Like I said before, if you live in the Durham or Clarington Regions of Ontario, I highly recommend taking this class from Annie’s Quilt Shop. It will take your creativity in a different direction while still showing off your love of quilting. Ashley showed me another block she’ll be adding to the roster in the future…I think she was tempting me to take the class yet again! LOL.

Another Fun Barn Quilt