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UWL class project helps promote Caledonia’s barn quilts program
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By Greg Schieber
Special for the Argus
A “project that would help the community,” is how John Nelson, a GeoSpatial biologist and professor at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, described a recent effort by his students to put down on paper what is now beautifying the local rural landscape, barn quilts.
Until recently, no good maps existed that outlined the locations of 27 barn quilt patterns blooming from area barns. Not knowing the lay of the land, the wayfaring stranger was likely to miss a few of them following verbal directions like “turn left off County 12 by Kohlmeyer’s, follow the gravel past Schansberg’s and Esch’s, drive by another 34 fence posts and look left at the place where old Fritz Beck used to live. Red barn, you can’t miss it. It’s got a quilt on it.”
The idea for having a local college create a map came from Ted Kjos. He suggested the idea after Anne Selness, chairperson of the barn quilt committee, explained the difficulty in creating a good map during a Caledonia Area Chamber of Commerce function. She contacted Nelson who jumped on the opportunity to use it as an exercise for his advanced GIS (geographical information systems) class.
Nelson described “basically it fit into the class. It was right at the beginning of the semester and a good project to get back into the swing of working with data.”
Nelson worked with Selness to collect the addresses and names of all the quilts. He then provided that information to his 24 students who each created their own map. Using road information from the state of Minnesota, students were able to plot the addresses as data points and use other tools to create a visually appealing map. Once the individual projects were complete, as a group they incorporated the best ideas from each map to create a finished product they presented to the Chamber of Commerce.
While Caledonia benefits from the map, Nelson explained the students benefit as well. “Students see how GIS can be used in a real life application,” Nelson said. “It was a really basic project but it’s something not part of a textbook and not in a workbook. It is something you could experience on a job and helps put the classwork they do into perspective.” He concluded, “It was good for Caledonia and the students.”
The new maps can be downloaded and printed off the city of Caledonia website, <http://www.caledoniamn.gov/>. Maps and brochures describing the quilt project can also be picked up at the Chamber of Commerce office at 214 E. Main St. Monday and Wednesday-Friday between the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. and from 8 a.m. to noon on Tuesdays.
A barn quilt-making class is being offered through Caledonia Community Education. The class, which will be taught by Selness, will be held March 30 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the high school media center.
For more information concerning the quilt tour or creating your own quilt pattern for display, call the Chamber of Commerce at 725-5477 or email them at
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