Cynthia Buchholz from Hutchinson is this year’s featured quilter for the Tracy Area Gardens & Quilts Tour, but she doesn’t create your average quilt. In fact, there’s no sewing involved in her craft.
For the past eight years, Buchholz has been painting barn quilts, installing them around her community, and teaching others how to create these works of art.
She originally took a class herself as to how to create the painted quilts, and when one of her husband’s coworkers saw her artwork, she insisted Buchholz teach a class of her own.
With plenty of coaxing and support from her family, she eventually did and hasn’t stopped since.
“Sometimes I’ve got classes five days a week!” Buchholz said. “It’s pretty neat how much it’s taken off.”
After she started posting some of her quilts on social media with her brand, Bittersweet Barn Quilt Company, she was asked to take over managing a Facebook group called “Barn Quilt Addicts.”
Since Buchholz took over as an administrator of the group in 2017, it’s grown to over 97,000 members from North America and beyond.
“It just keeps growing by leaps and bounds,” she said. “It’s a great resource for people who are just getting started, or for anyone who wants to learn more. Plenty of people also use it for business, and that works out, too.”
Buchholz loves how anyone can enjoy a barn quilt.
There are quilt trails across the country that outline routes with multiple quilts that people can drive by and see, with eight in Minnesota alone.
“The beautiful thing is that it’s free, and you can do it any day you want to. It’s something you can do even in the winter, or on rainy days,” she added.
Her biggest project was creating multiple quilt murals with the help of her community to place on the side of buildings on the McCloud County fairgrounds. She drew up patterns for quilts, and then fairgoers could paint a geometric section with her help.
The panels holding the quilts were then affixed to the sides of fairground buildings.
The Caboose in Tracy will feature many of her quilts, along with some in different design stages so tour attendees can visualize the process. Buchholz will also be giving demonstrations and answering questions onsite.
“I thought I’d get tired of them, but I haven’t,” she concluded. “I still love it. Creating and teaching and all of it.”
Pictured is one of Cynthia Buchholz’s colorful creations.
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