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When a close friend of Pat Laubenthal saw barn quilts, she instantly thought of Pat. “She knows I like to paint crafts,” Pat of Whittemore, Iowa, says. “I paint on anything and everything I can get my fingers on. She told me, ‘Oh you must see these barn quilts.’ She was right, I fell in love with them.”

“I thought they were actually painted on the barn,” Pat says. Instead, the quilt pattern is painted on a square piece of plywood and hung up on the barn. Pat started by painting a small quilt for herself, not knowing how the project would turn out, and was pleasantly surprised with her results. “All that it took was hanging it up,” Pat says, “and people would pull in to take pictures and ask questions. Then, all of a sudden, I started taking orders.”

Pat makes five or six barn quilts during the summer when she can paint outdoors. Sometimes the customer decides what pattern and colors they want while others let Pat choose the design and colors. “I think I like it better when there are more designs in it, versus the big squares. I don’t want them too detailed, but I don’t want them boring,” Pat says.

Normally the quilts are painted with a red, white and blue pattern, but Pat likes painting quilts with four or five colors. “I don’t like bright colors; I like the more subdued, antique colors.”

Pat’s husband helps her with the first steps of constructing the barn quilts. “He builds the frames out of plywood and frames them for me,” she says. The quilts vary in size and can range from 4 to 64 square feet. Once the frames are completed, Pat primes both the front and the back, and then draws the pattern. Each color is taped off and gets three coats of paint. “I try to do the painting in one day, but if it’s humid it’s not possible,” Pat says. After everything is touched up, she stains the quilt which helps to protect it.

Pat doesn’t limit her painted quilts to barns. “Not everybody has a barn,” she says. “Some people just want to put something on a fence or on the side of their garage.” So she paints on old windows, or makes three-dimensional stars and attaches them to painted old barn doors. Pat’s creations are endless. “You name it, I paint it,” she says. “I just love it, I just love to paint.”