Birth of a Barn Quilt

Sean's brother, Paul, was our master carpenter on the project

and his sister, Carman provided the artistic skills

The farm crew discusses the installation plan

Up, up, up it goes...

Just a little higher...

The "Blue Gate Star" in its place of honor.

Wasn't there a contest???

Well, there is nothing like setting a deadline, announcing a contest and then falling flat on your face with the follow-through. Somehow, no matter how well we think we have planned everything, this time of year always catches up with us. Ah well, things like this are just proof we can learn...right??

Regardless, we did actually have the contest and we received more than twenty fabulous entries. The stumbling block was realizing that the design we thought we were looking for was actually far too complicated for the actual piece . So, after sifting and sorting through all the submissions, we finally took inspiration from one of them and created a final design that we felt portrayed Blue Gate Farm while still holding to the tradition of barn quilt designs.  Then looking back, we realized that we had actually received another submission with the same basic pattern.

Here is the cool submission from our CSA member Amy B. that was our launching pad:

a basket filled with produce!

and then the entry from Virginian Phyllis H. that we at first overlooked:

and finally, the design that we settled on after many hours of ruminating and "discussion"...

This is our Blue Gate Star design. The colors of each chevron represent important crops that we produce on the farm including honey, tomatoes, eggplant, summer squash, peppers, blue & brown eggs and the edible flower in our salad mix. The greens represent the myriad of greens that we grow and the corners are our trademark blue pickets.

Congratulations to our contest winners Amy & Phyllis. They have/will receive a package of goodies from the farm in thanks for their inspiration!

Here's a fun link to Amy's blog post about the contest: Design of the Times

Will post photos of the actual quilt in the next day or so.

A Little Friendly Competition

BGF Barn Quilt Contest

 

Blue Gate Farm (via Leo Beebout Construction) has been building a new barn/packing shed this season. It is a fairly large; two-story structure with a lovely peak expanse of light tan siding that is visible when you turn into the farm lane. We thought what a perfect place to highlight a barn quilt. We’ve looked around a bit, but haven’t found any design that speaks to us. Then we thought, we know a lot of creative people, maybe one of them would have the perfect idea, so here’s the challenge…

 The Timeline: 

Contest starts August 1, 2011 and submissions are due by August 21, 2011.

Winner will be announced September 1, 2011 

The Goal: 

To find/create a design to be realized (by BGF) in a painted 4-foot square wooden panel on the BGF barn 

The Prize: 

A basket of Blue Gate Farm products AND the realization of your design BGF barn, to be featured at Blue Gate Farm for the 2011 Farm Crawl on Sunday, October 2.

The Considerations:
Anyone can enter (though gift basket is only deliverable within the continental US)

We are a chemical-free vegetable, honey, egg and herb farm

Blue is the general theme at Blue Gate Farm

Our logo looks like this:

Our website is www.bluegatefarmfresh (take a look around if you aren’t familiar with us)

                                                               

For ease of judging, submissions should be made in the form of a picture, (computer-generated or hand-drawn) and may be sent via email to mail@bluegatefarmfresh.com or via post at the following address:

Blue Gate Farm

749 Wyoming St

Chariton, IA  50049

Please include your name, address and email address so that we may contact you if we have any questions about your entry or, more importantly, if you are the winner.

Not familiar with barn quilts? Here’s a website for a little background: http://www.barnquilts.com/