Page 6 - Harnett Life Summer 2020

Quintessential Quilts

Whether on a bed or a barn, you have to love them!
By Crissy Neville

The American love affair with the quilt is as cozy and comfort- banks has been “the inspiration” behind it all.
ing as the blanket itself. Maybe you have your grandmother’s
star block beauty on a guest bed or the pretty patchwork baby “Dr. Marshbanks got the idea started when he started painting
quilt your mom made for your firstborn tucked away for safe- barn quilts himself a few years ago,” said Stevens. “He has
keeping. From the structured double wedding ring pattern to painted and given away so many barn quilts throughout the
the anything-goes crazy quilt, these cloth coverings do more county, never accepting any payment for his work. He does not
than keep us warm — they highlight our family heritage and sell his pieces; he finds the people he wishes to gift them to,
pay homage to the nation’s history from early colonization to such as the one given to the Town of Lillington and right here
modern celebrations.

While the quilt’s formative years were for function, by the ear-
ly 1900s, quilting transformed from a necessary art of piece-
mealing and patching into a creative and convergent new one.
Women began creating quilts with inherent beauty and crafts-
manship, using traditional hand skills but with finer fabrics and
special touches. Now in the 21st century, quilt making lives on
in the conventional form but also birthed on a new canvas —
one as big as, well, a barn.

Throughout Western North Carolina, the beautiful colors,
shapes and patterns of barn quilts punctuate the picturesque
barns along the Blue Ridge Parkway and other byways. Now
Harnett County is joining ranks in this agricultural artistry with
the establishment of the Harnett County Barn Quilt/History
Trail. In the works since 2018, the barn quilt trail got its start
with the works of Dr. Burgess Marshbanks, a 97-year-old re-
tired dentist and barn quilt painter from Buies Creek known for
donating his creations. According to Sharon Stevens, commu-
nity marketing director for the Dunn Area Tourism Authority,
the local body organizing the promotion of the trail, Marsh-