From Ohio to Wisconsin: Honoring the Barn Quilt Makers Who Came Before Us
- Jennifer Raddatz
- Aug 22
- 6 min read
Updated: 1 hour ago
When I started Wisconsin Barn Quilt Co., I certainly wasn't starting something new.
Barn quilts were here long before I began drawing patterns, testing boards and putting paint to plywood. And before we talk about where barn quilts are going, I think it's important to remember some of the people who helped bring them to the barns and backroads we recognize today.
For me, though, the connection to barns goes back even further.
I Grew Up With a Barn
I grew up with an old barn.
It wasn't decorative. It wasn't a backdrop for photographs or something we admired from the road. It was simply part of our life.
We kept horses, cattle and chickens there. There was a rope hanging in the hay mow, and swinging from that rope was almost a rite of passage. We had parties in the barn. We climbed around where we probably shouldn't have. It was a working farm building, but it was also part playground, part gathering place and part childhood memory.
In 1991 my parents had a house fire. They lived in a mobile home on the property while insurance was determined and a new house was built. Two years later in 1993, they had the rest of the old house intentionally burned and decided to let the old barn go that morning too. A piece of our family history was lost that day.
At the time, I never thought about saving pieces of it. Today, I wish I had kept some of that old barn wood. I would love to have even a few boards from a place that held so many memories.
Maybe that's part of why barns and barn quilts appeal to me so much now.
I'm a painter, so naturally I'm drawn to the color and design. But I think there's something more to it. Barns hold stories. Quilts hold stories. Put the two together, and you have something that feels distinctly connected to rural life, family and place.
Donna Sue Groves understood that connection very well.
It Started With a Promise to Her Mother
The modern American barn quilt trail movement is generally traced to Donna Sue Groves in Adams County, Ohio. Donna Sue grew up surrounded by both quilts and barns. Her mother and grandmothers were quilters, and family road trips included a game in which she and her brother counted different kinds of barns.
Years later, Donna Sue and her mother, Maxine, owned a farm in southern Ohio. Donna Sue thought their rather plain tobacco barn needed some color and promised her mother that someday she would paint a quilt square on it.
By 2000, friends encouraged her to finally do it.
But Donna Sue's idea grew. Rather than putting just one quilt square on one barn, why not put quilt squares on several barns and create a driving trail?
A committee formed in January 2001, and the first square was hung in Adams County in October of that year. Other communities noticed, called to ask how they could do something similar, and the idea began spreading across the country.
What I especially love about Donna Sue's story is that the project wasn't really about decorating barns.
She saw it as a way of celebrating rural heritage, preserving stories, bringing communities together and even creating economic opportunities for rural areas.
That's a philosophy I can get behind.
They Learned by Doing
There's another part of Donna Sue's story that I find particularly interesting as a painter.
Originally, they thought they would simply paint the quilt designs directly onto the barns.
It didn't work quite as expected.
Those beautiful old barns had beautiful old wood—and old, weathered wood can absorb an enormous amount of paint. Donna Sue recalled that it took coat after coat.
The group eventually moved away from painting directly on the historic barns and instead painted the designs on panels that could then be attached to them.
Donna Sue specifically described barn quilts being painted on plywood, MDO or other sign-board materials. The sizes varied according to where the barn was located, including 2-, 4-, 8- and even 10-foot squares.
That's worth remembering today.
There wasn't one magical "barn quilt board."
People experimented. They learned what worked. They adapted their methods.
And barn quilt makers are still doing that.
Then Barn Quilts Came to Shawano
Here in Wisconsin, one of the people who took that idea and ran with it was Jim Leuenberger of Shawano County.
Jim, a local writer and photographer, had seen barn quilts in Iowa, Kentucky, Oregon and southern Wisconsin.
In 2010, he proposed creating a barn quilt project in Shawano County.
The project eventually developed three goals: preserving historic barns, promoting tourism and giving groups such as 4-H and FFA opportunities to participate in a community project.
Jim and his wife, Irene, ended up painting most of the quilts themselves.
And they painted a lot of barn quilts.
In April 2026, the Shawano County project officially concluded with barn quilt #413.
Think about that for a minute.
Four hundred and thirteen barn quilts.
As someone who paints, I can't help but think about the amount of painter's tape involved.
Apparently, Jim did too.
Over the life of the project, he estimated using more than 40,000 feet of painter's tape, 300 gallons of primer and 250 quarts of colored paint.
Now that's a paint supply list.
How Did They Make Them?
This is where history becomes genuinely useful for those of us making barn quilts today.
The Shawano quilts were big—much bigger than the 12- and 24-inch projects many people make at home.
Each finished quilt measured 8 feet by 8 feet, created from two 4-by-8-foot sheets of 3/4-inch plywood.
Their preparation was substantial.
They applied two coats of primer to both sides of the plywood and the edges. After laying out the pattern, they used painter's tape to create the design. Each paint color received three coats, with the coats allowed to dry overnight. Finished quilts were then allowed to dry for at least two weeks before installation.
There's a lesson there that hasn't become outdated:
Preparation matters.
The prettiest paint pattern in the world isn't going to compensate for a poorly prepared outdoor surface.
So What Do We Do Differently Today?
This is where Wisconsin Barn Quilt Co. enters the story.
I'm not interested in telling people, "This is how barn quilts have always been made, so this is the only way you should make one."
Materials change. Paint technology changes. New products become available. And sometimes advice gets repeated so many times that nobody remembers whether anyone actually tested it.
I'd rather test it.
I'm currently experimenting with different board materials, primers, paints, edge treatments and finishes to see what actually holds up—particularly in the kind of weather we experience here in Wisconsin.
And I'm not exactly being gentle with some of those test boards.
They're going to get wet. They're going outside. They're going to experience temperature changes and Wisconsin weather. I'll continue checking them over time and share what happens here in the WI Barn Quilt Journal.
If something fails, I'll tell you.
If something surprises me, I'll tell you that too.
Because knowing that Jim and Irene successfully made hundreds of plywood barn quilts is useful information. Knowing how today's readily available materials perform is useful too.
The two aren't in competition.
One builds on the other.
Some Things Haven't Changed at All
More than 25 years after Donna Sue Groves helped start that first Ohio trail, the basic idea remains remarkably simple.
Take a quilt design.
Make it bigger.
Put it on a board.
Add some paint.
Hang it somewhere people can enjoy it.
But behind that simple process is something much bigger.
It's why Donna Sue's story resonates with me. Her own memories of barns went back to childhood. So do mine.
My childhood barn is gone. I can't go back now and rescue one of those old weathered boards. I can't climb into that hay mow or swing from that rope again.
But I can appreciate what those places represented.
And now, as a painter, I get to take a small part in carrying this particular rural art tradition forward.
Wisconsin Barn Quilt Co. will certainly use modern tools, new designs and materials that weren't available to the earliest barn quilt projects. We'll test things, experiment with colors and probably change our minds occasionally when something works—or doesn't work—the way we expected.
But I don't want to do any of that without remembering the people who painted before us.
Donna Sue. Maxine. Jim. Irene. The 4-H kids and FFA members. The artists, farmers, barn owners and volunteers who picked up brushes and painter's tape along the way.
They gave us a pretty wonderful place to start.
A Little Something to Get You Started
In the spirit of those early barn quilt projects, I'm including a free 12" × 12" Maple Leaf barn quilt pattern with this article. Full instructions are there too!
Print it, trace it, choose colors that mean something to you, and make it your own.
Because that's really what this tradition has been about all along.
[DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE BARN QUILT PATTERN]
And keep checking the WI Barn Quilt Journal. I'll be sharing the results of my outdoor board and paint tests, painting techniques, color combinations, barn quilt history, new materials I'm trying—and, occasionally, another free pattern.
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