A quilt block on a barn located on the North Okanagan Shuswap Barn Quilt Trail.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Laurel Neufeld
September 10, 2023 - 6:00 AM
Enderby resident Laurel Neufeld loves to ride her bicycle or motorbike onto country roads with her camera in search of brightly coloured painted quilt squares on barns throughout the North Okanagan.
“I like to take photos, it’s a bit of a hobby, most are taken with a pocket camera but it has a nice zoom,” she said.
Over fifty barn quilts can be found on barns, businesses and residential homes throughout Spallumcheen, Armstrong and the Shuswap on what is called the North Okanagan Shuswap Barn Quilt Trail, a project that launched in 2016 and continues to grow with more quilts being created and added every year.
The trail organization created a detailed map for those who want to go on self-guided tours to find the quilts.
“These quilt blocks bring together and highlight the traditions of quilting and farming, two traditions that are very much alive in the region today,” the trail’s website reads.
For Neufeld the trail is the perfect way to get out and enjoy the rural outdoor spaces in her community and of course, take bright, colourful photos. So far she has photographed 30 of the quilts since starting her hunt for them in 2020. She’d like to find and photograph them all, but there are always more being added.
“It’s been such a fun way to get out and enjoy and explore the outdoors,” she said. “All of the buildings are different and have character, I found one quilt on a really old little barn that is hard to see from the road. I really love some of the quilts.”
A quilt block on a barn located on the North Okanagan Shuswap Barn Quilt Trail.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Laurel Neufeld
Barn quilts are not actual quilts, they are painted to look like quilts on pieces of plywood called quilt blocks and hung for people walking by to enjoy.
Canada’s barn quilt tradition first began in Ontario who introduced their first Barn Quilt Trail in 2009. Since then there have been more than 7,000 barn quilts decorating the countryside in Canada and the U.S. and the numbers are growing.
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The North Okanagan Shuswap Barn Quilt Trail is the first barn quilt trail in the province and continues through a partnership between the Armstrong Spallumcheen Chamber of Commerce, a quilt store in Armstrong called Quilting For You, Nor-Val Rentals and volunteers.
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Go here for more information and a map of the barn quilts or you can pick up a map at the Armstrong Spallumcheen Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Centre, located at 3550 Bridge St.
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