Pictured is the Wally the Walnut-inspired quilt block on display with its creators. Pictured from left are Sharon King (back), Deb Crowe, Audrey Medina, Sandy Sanders, Susan Trautman and Ana Marie Tomlinson. Photos courtesy of Rio Linda Elverta Quilt Trail Project

 

RIO LINDA, CA (MPG) – Rio Linda residents and visitors alike can now enjoy the Rio Linda Barn Quilt Trail Project.

The project presents a self-guided driving and biking tour of local barns, businesses, and homes. The trail displays painted barn quilt blocks created by volunteers and designed individually for each property and owner. The Rio Linda Barn Quilt Trail Project uses traditional and modified designs.

Displaying brightly painted quilt blocks on barns is a renewed American art form inspired by Donna Sue Groves. In 2001, Groves and friends created a block to memorialize her mom Nina and hung it on the family barn.

The Underground Railroad Quilt Block pays tribute to the Underground Railroad.

Quilt blocks soon began to appear on barns, homes, and businesses across the Midwest and Canada. The network of barn quilt trails now numbers over 5,000 barn quilts that stretch across the country over an imaginary clothesline.

Rio Linda locals Rick and Debra Crowe discovered a barn quilt trail by accident while on a deer hunting trip in Nebraska. Debra Crowe brought the idea home to her local quilting group and founded the Rio Linda Barn Quilt Trail Project.

The Carpenter’s Wheel quilt block shows the flowers in Sharon and Randy King’s yard at 7420 Dry Creek Road.

The Rio Linda Elverta Quilt Trail Project promotes community pride by creating a public art project to display brightly-painted quilt blocks on barns, homes and businesses. The project is part of a national movement that connects communities by developing and contributing to an imaginary clothesline of painted quilt blocks that stretches across the country.

One of the painted barn quilt blocks along the trail pays tribute to Wally the Walnut, the Legacy award-winning tree from the Sacramento Tree Foundation, and possibly the largest walnut tree in the Sacramento Valley region. Located along the Sacramento-Northern Bike Trail near Rio Linda Central Park, the quilt block features flying geese crossing a harvest moon above Wally’s fall foliage.

The quilt block at 443 W. Ascot Ave is on the side of the barn and features an Arabian horse.

Another barn quilt block along the Rio Linda trail pays tribute to the Underground Railroad. Prior to the Civil War, quilts played an important part in the Underground Railroad movement. African Americans followed secret routes and safe houses from southern slave states north to free states and Canada. Travelers and plantation visitors passed information to slaves about the routes and helped them prepare for their journeys. Quilts were hung on clotheslines and fences as messages to escaping slaves about food, shelter and directions along the way. Many routes were followed north and all the routes were known collectively as the Underground Railroad.

Rio Linda Elverta Quilt Trail Project members are grateful for the opportunity to create this public art project.

For more information about the project, visit online at RLEQuiltTrail.com.