W
e all are in love with these Floral Barn Quilts! No matter where I go I get asked how to make them so I am sharing my favorite method today on KUTV's Fresh Living. They are pretty easy to make, but so worth getting a little mess on your fingers.
We are making a Floral Barn Quilt Flag today using the fabric print from one of my dear friends, Sharri from Doohikey Designs. You could use any fabric or paper print you want. What you will be doing is releasing the ink image from the fabric or paper into the paint. It leaves the image looking as if you had painted it years ago.
The first step is to find your fabric or paper image and head to your local copy shop. Have them copy your fabric or paper onto a low grade paper in the size you want. For this project my barn quilt board surface is 11" x 17" so I had them copy the print for me on that size of paper. I have tried printing it on my home printer, and I do not get the color saturation that I get at my local copy shop. So it is worth the extra trip to get it done right.
Now that you have your images on paper, you will need to gather some materials. As I mentioned above, my barn quilt board is 11" x 17" and was sanded and painted with a flat country white paint. It is good to paint your surface with a flat paint so that the image will soak into the paint even more than if you used a semi-gloss or satin.
The magic potion that releases the image is this messy stuff called Matte Gel by Liquitex. I found mine at Hobby Lobby. It costs about $8.00 a jar and is enough to make several of these barn quilts. You will also want a cheep chip brush, some paper towels, scissors, a marking pen (Frixion) or pencil and a large sheet of disposable paper to cover the table.
Cut your papers to fit your lines and place on the board to get an idea of how it will look. Trim off any access now because once the medium is on the paper it turns to mush and is difficult to trim.
Lay out your large disposable paper. Using your chip brush, brush the right side of the papers. You want a fair amount of the medium on the paper. I have tried brushing it on the board first and it doesn't work as well as when you brush it onto the paper first. Once the paper is covered with the medium, lay it face down on the designated spot and smooth it out. Make sure you get out most of the air bubbles.
Once all the pieces are "glued" on let dry over night. Once the paper is thoroughly dry, you take a slightly damp rag and begin to rub the paper fibers off of the board. Rub lightly so as to not remove the image on the paint. Be patient with this process, it takes awhile to get the fibers off the board.
After the fibers are gone, wipe the board with a dry paper towel to remove any little pieces. You can now finish your Floral Barn Quilt Flag any way you wish. I like my barn quilts to have an aged appearance, so I lightly sand them using 100 grit sandpaper and then wipe over them with the Minwax Weathered Grey stain mixed 50/50 with Linseed Oil. THis seals the image to the wood and gives minimal aging.
To frame the barn quilt we used 1 x 2 wood cut to fit around the quilt and tacked into place with staples.
You can watch today's Fresh Living segment and watch this process from beginning to end. We are also giving away one of these cuties. To enter to win, follow us on Instagram or on Facebook and like today's post. We hope you are inspried to make some of your own Floral Barn Quilt Flags.
