Tour Barn Quilts During The
Chapman Labor
Day Celebration
By Lori Hambright
Join
Chapman on Labor Day weekend – especially on Monday, September 7th,
for their 100-plus-year celebration. Not
only is it a homecoming for families in the area, but it’s the ‘last hurrah’ of
summertime fun for the year.
Chapman
shares its weekend also with the long-running Friday & Saturday Longford
Rodeo events and there’s time to take it all in and still be close to home.
A
special new feature to Chapman Labor Day
this year is the city of Chapman being declared a “Barn Quilt Cit.”
Just in town one can see nearly 70 barn quilts.
Self-guided
barn quilt walking and driving tours will be a highlight of the many activities
in Chapman. Maps will be available after
September 1st at area businesses, on the Chapman EDC facebook page
and at the www.ksflinthillsquilttrail.com
site. (MAP BROCHURE BELOW)
Labor
Day Monday has special features if one chooses to tour then. Do the tour routes and get a free scoop of
ice cream. Deanna Munson of Munson
Homemade Ice Cream will be in downtown Chapman.
Show her your map, name your favorite barn quilt and receive a free
scoop of ice cream. And/or visit the
Lucky Charm Quilt Shop in downtown (see their five barn quilts on their
storefront), and see the barn quilt display inside while shopping their big Labor
Day sales. Don’t stop here. You can win a barn quilt! The Class of ’77 Car Show is selling raffle
tickets on a patriotic 2 x 2. The car show is fast becoming “one to go to” of classic autos.
But wait! Visit the Quilt Show (all local-made fabric
quilts) in the Methodist Church hall.
There’s more! But get it done and then enjoy the 2:00 p. m. parade, “The
Trail…Our Heritage.” The theme is
honoring the Butterfield Overland Despatch stage line and Smoky Hill Trail on
it’s 150th anniversary in 2015.
The BOD/Smoky Hill Trail segment at Chapman was recently named to the
National Historic Register in July. You
can walk the BOD swales (ruts) on the west side of Indian Hill (Old 40 hwy
& Quail Road) and also see a ‘wagon tracks’ barn quilt by the sign.
The
popularity of barn quilts in and around the Chapman area has been due to the
activity of Dickinson County as part of the Kansas Flint Hills Quilt Trail and
many barn quilt painting classes; also the Chapman Barn Quilt project directed
by DK Co/KSFHQT, Chapman High School Art Club and the Chapman EDC which was
conducted this spring and early summer.
Profits from the community project benefitted the CHS Art Club.
To
learn more about the Barn Quilt movement in the 22-county area of the Kansas
Flint Hills, visit: www.ksflinthillsquilttrail.com.
See you Labor Day in Chapman!
