Barn Raising & Cubicle Quilt

Let me start by saying that people are awesome. I expressed a plea at work in our Friday morning staff meeting for help with framing our building, and lo and behold two of my co-workers were game! One brought his fiancé and we also had Jim out to help. Our farm would not run without that man and this was yet one more thing where he knew all sorts of useful things!!

Barn Raising! Greg is in the gray, Drew is in the orange, Melanie is in the green, Ryan is on the left in the blue and Jim is on the right in the blue.

By the end of the day we now have the front and back walls up, which is awesome. We also learned a bunch about how to do this in the future, which was super valuable. Knowing how to frame is another one of those skills that we city kids just don't know.

Ok, so it's not truly a barn but is a 20 ft x 30 ft chicken building to be a layer house and brooder. We're using a blueprint written by Kasco poultry in 1943. We went back to that old blueprint because it's from a time when people did something closer to what we do.


A couple of weeks ago I also finished a small quilt for a wall hanging, and when I started it I was planning to use it to start on Christmas gifts, etc. Instead I liked it so much that I decided to hang it in my cubicle at work, at least for a little while. I refuse to feel guilty about that because, well, I just do. The one that was there had been there for almost 2 years already.

 It's a pattern from two ladies in Ames who write modern quilt patterns and it was super fun to make! The pattern is Modern Pickle Relish and their pattern shop can be found here. I will also note that it was a very well-written pattern, and I loved that it still has a very modern feel to it even though I used civil war reproduction fabrics.