Drive the back roads in a lot of this country and you will start to notice them: bright quilt blocks painted on the sides of barns, one after another, marking a quilt trail across the county. Quilters pull over for every single one. The US States and Destinations collection is our own quilt trail, and each design is a stop along the way, the outline of a state or the frame of a favorite place filled with a stitched scene in appliqué texture and soft embroidered detail, finished with Stitchin' In lettering in easy script. Buckle up.
Stops along the water
The trail starts on the coast. Maryland fills its outline with red crabs, little sailboats and a lighthouse on the bay, and Baltimore answers with a skyline, a tall ship under full sail and a few crabs scuttling through the waves. Head north and inland to Boundary Waters, where a canoe waits on a blue lake beside a crackling campfire and a wall of pines. Out west, Lake Tahoe scatters sailboats beneath snowcapped peaks, while Greenville and West Virginia each send a graceful arched bridge over tumbling falls.
Stops under the big sky
Then the land opens up. Kansas sets a gathering twister over golden wheat and a windmill, and Nebraska rolls a covered wagon across green fields while a crane glides overhead. New Mexico strings red chiles beneath adobe walls and a sky full of hot air balloons, and Albuquerque adds purple mountains and a Route 66 sign. The colors shift to rust and gold as you go: a bison grazes before red buttes in North Dakota, layered spires rise in the Badlands, and Big Bend winds its river between canyon walls and cactus.
Stops in the hills and small towns
Vermont is autumn in state form, maple leaves drifting over hills with sap buckets waiting below. New Hampshire tucks a red covered bridge beneath snowy peaks and a blaze of gold. Pennsylvania gathers the Liberty Bell, red barns and a long bridge into one tidy scene, and Ohio fits a roller coaster, an electric guitar and a cornfield side by side. Alabama layers red gingham and cotton bolls over a rocket and a ship on the water, and Augusta blooms in pink beside a putting green with its little red flag.
For the quilter who always wants to pull over
This collection belongs to the quilter who still calls a certain state home no matter where she lives now, the friend who plans vacations around quilt shops and scenic overlooks, and anyone in The Stitch Circle who has made the whole car wait while she photographed a barn. Picture her face when she finds the state she grew up in. Start there, then add the one she keeps talking about visiting. A good quilt trail never really ends. There is always one more barn around the bend.
Written by Jacqueline. Thanks for reading.
